Seasonal Pest Control
If there is one thing that has struck me about pest control over the last few years it is the fact that everything has been so ‘up and down’. I seem to remember having set seasons, I could almost set my watch by when the first wasp nest call would come in or when the rat calls would start. I guess the weather is partly to blame and if you look through my blog you will see I mention it quite often! I don’t know if that’s a British thing or a pest controller thing! So whats new in Pest Control 2014?
Rats and Pubs
I guess the thing that I noticed was a decrease in the number of rats I was asked to deal with. The cold weather never really came so the winter deluge of rat calls never really materialised as we would normally expect.
But that does not mean the rats were not there and given the fact the cold weather wont have killed many off, when they have come they have been a real problem to sort out. For example in winter I would expect calls from town center pubs, a rat has been pushed in by the cold weather and I would go round to remove it. This year when I did get problems in pubs it was quite often later in the spring and the problem wouldn’t have been just one rat, it is proving to be a much larger scale problem.
Quite often the issue has started outside, maybe around the bins, maybe around a man hole to the main sewer or up a back street or car park. What has happened is instead of a odd rats it is a case of a wider spread local problem that has eventually entered a premises.
Commercial Property Rat Protection
Its always important to make sure that business properties, especially those serving food or hospitality are properly proofed against rodents. But when we get the conditions we now have, with bigger problems stretching over a larger area then it soon becomes a bigger problem than just one rat finding its way in. Often older inner city or town center pubs will have forgotten back entrances and yards, ginnels and alleyways that once ran from long bricked up doorways, or even paths between the property next door which nobody knows who owns, so both have given up looking after it. This not only provides a perfect breeding ground for rats but often hides holes and pipes that provide an entry point for rats.
A hole around a pipe, giving instant rodent access.
Seasonal Pest Control Changes
June and July also see’s a change in mole pest control jobs. After the rush in February to clear the farm moles before the grass starts growing, things slow down for a while, perhaps a few calls to clear moles from garden but on the whole mole control jobs get less and less. The ground begins to dry out and the big black mole hills become less and less. Over June and July the young moles get pushed out and are seeking territory of their own. When this comes at a time when we have dry ground then catching up with these moles stops being quite so easy. They will often just push up small shallow runs, almost swimming under the surface, they are also there one minute and somewhere else the next day, leading to frustrating work in dealing with them.
moles on a grass verge.
On a recent call out I was asked to deal with some moles on a grass verge in Bolton. The verge ran around the outside of a car park on a commercial business park. I was actually called in by the landscaping company as the previous week while strimming the grass a small stone pushed up by the moles had been thrown at high speed by the strimmer and had actually smashed a car windscreen! Imagine if the stone had actually hit a person! Your local Pest Control company to the rescue again!
