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Pest Control Specialists Contact Us

4012 N. Main Street
Dayton, OH 45405

QUESTION:

What is the difference between non-ionic sticker and liquid dish soap?

ANSWER:

I am not a chemist, and pretty much hated chemistry in college, so it can be confusing to me too to get too technical on this. But, basically a liquid dish soap is a wetting agent……….period. The definition I could find all over the internet is that a Surfactant is something which breaks down the surface tension of water to allow things to get wetter, and thus makes it easier to remove dirt, grease, etc. and keeps these materials suspended in the water so that it can be rinsed and removed. If you put a drop of water on a leaf it would ball up to create that bulbous drop just sitting there. This is because water molecules cling together and keep them as that drop. This is the reason bugs like water striders are able to skate across the top of the water rather than sinking. They are standing on molecules of water that are connected to each other.

For our purposes in using pesticides, particularly herbicides, Surfactant means “surface active agent”, and we tend to lump several other kinds of materials into it. This includes Spreaders, Stickers, Penetrants, Buffers, etc., and each of these really does do something different on the surface of the plant. Some are self explanatory – penetrants help move the active ingredient into the plant by breaking down the waxy coating on some foliage, spreaders help break down the surface tension of the water so that the spray droplets flatten out and cover more of the leaf, buffers lower the pH of the water so that it is more acidic, which helps to lessen the destruction of the pesticide molecule. Another term used for all of these is “Adjuvants”, and maybe this is the better word to use, since it refers to things we add to the spray solution to enhance it in some way.

Stickers are just that – they are surfactants that assist in keeping the spray and the active ingredient on the foliage so that it is retained longer and can have a longer time to kill bugs or affect the weed. Dish soap really is not a sticker, so if a sticker is called for or desirable then a commercial product labeled as such should be used. Some of the commercial products combine the substances. For example No Foam A is a Spreader-Activator, No Foam B is a Spreader-Activator-Buffer, EcoAdjuvant is a Spreader-Emulsifier.

It is important to read all that fine print on product labels, and some may recommend the use of one or another kind of spray adjuvant. Spreaders are particularly important for weed control, as many weeds have very hairy stems or leaves, and a spreader (including liquid soap I suppose) would help break down the water surface tension to get the spray solution onto the foliage itself. If drift is a concern you should consider adding a drift retardant that minimizes the fine particles most likely to be carried off site. If the water in your area is high in pH then a buffer would be a good idea, especially with insecticides. It also would be very advisable to use a product actually formulated for use with pesticides, rather than dish soap which is intended for a very different use, and some state regulatory agencies might even frown on the use of liquid soap being used as an additive to a pesticide spray solution.

Oops, almost forgot the part about “non-ionic”. Here are the basics, but don’t get confused. Ionic refers to something with an electrical charge to it, either a positive charge (cationic) or a negative charge (anionic), and this can have an effect on the herbicide you use. Soap is apparently anionic, and thus has a negative charge to it, and anionic materials do not like “hard” water – water with a high mineral content and thus are alkaline. If the herbicide you use tells you to add a Non-ionic surfactant (one that is neither positive nor negative) then liquid soap should NOT be used. It may also have something to do with the natural electrical properties of the surface of weeds, whereby using the wrong surfactant could prevent the herbicide from sticking to the foliage or getting into the tissues.

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QUESTION:

I am having a hard time catching the one last mouse. It stays away from glue boards and snap traps, and I am not allowed to use any bait because the owners have a dog. Any ideas?

ANSWER:

Since this is a residence at least you have a more manageable situation than you would in a larger commercial setting. One thing that is very much needed is to ensure the complete cooperation of the customers in removing ALL other food resources that the mouse has to be finding. This could even be dog food left in the bowl all the time, or dog foods stored in bags where the mice can get to it. If so, then the food should be prepared for the dog, the dog allowed to eat, and the food immediately removed and stored in a mouse-proof container until you are confident there are no more mice in this home. Look at all other food resources as well, such as packaged foods in the cupboards and other storage areas, and all of these must be placed within some sealed containers that will prevent the mice from easily getting to it. This could be thick plastic bins that are easily purchased at stores and which have snap-on lids. If food continues to be left available for the mice they are much more likely to continue to ignore your traps.

Also concentrate heavily on EXCLUSION, and do a careful evaluation of the exterior to determine just how these mice managed to get into this home. Any and all openings (over 1/4 inch wide) must be permanently closed to prevent more mice from entering in the future. It doesn’t pay to catch the mice indoors with a lot of hard work just to allow new ones to enter later.

Once you have minimized or removed all alternative foods you can bait your traps with tempting morsels that will be likely to draw the mice to the traps, whether snap traps or glue traps. There are some commercial attractants that seem to be very attractive to mice, or you can use peanut butter, dried fruit, bits of chocolate, nuts, bacon bits, etc. Tie these to the snap trap trigger so the mouse has to tug on it to try to remove it. Tie the traps to something nearby so it cannot be dragged away if the mouse is caught only by a foot. Use LOTS of traps and place them immediately against walls and other likely runways. You might go in with a UV flashlight and turn the lights off inside so you can scan the area to see if you can spot the runways – urine will fluoresce under UV light. The mice are creatures of habit, and will use favored runways repeatedly.

Clean up all clutter. Mice hate changes, and when you disturb the area they are comfortable with it causes them to move around more, increasing the chances of an encounter with your traps. I have no argument with not using bait inside the home, particularly when it is possibly only one or a few mice. Trapping is faster and more certain that you have gotten the rascals, and traps should be checked within a few days at the most.

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QUESTION:

Has the Brown Recluse arrived in Florida? I live in the Deltona area and I have been told that LOTS of people are being bitten by the Brown Recluse. Have you heard of such a thing?

ANSWER:

I love this topic but also am frustrated by it, because California (my home state) suffers from the same problem as you folks in Florida do. The REPORTS of brown recluse spider bites made by doctors diagnosing every open sore on someone’s skin as a spider bite are apparently wrong nearly all the time. The fact is that YES, the brown recluse has “arrived” in Florida several times, and has “arrived” in California maybe a dozen times over the past 30 years, but neither state has resident populations of this spider. In-depth investigations by the Universities in both states and the Departments of Agriculture have concluded that nearly every reported recluse bite could not be confirmed, and nearly all the time no spider was definitely linked to the skin problem.

I sent your question to one of our sales reps in Miami, who got an excellent response from an expert in Florida, and his answer is that Loxosceles reclusa is NOT an established resident spider in Florida. There have been only a couple of confirmed incidents where this species was actually found, and in each case clearly was imported with materials from other states. They investigated 328 “reported” Recluse bites, and found that only 1 (that is One, Uno, one less than 2, 1 more than zero) was factual, and this was a truck driver handling freight brought into the state. This is pretty much an exact parallel with California, where the reported bites outweigh the actual presence of the spider by about 100%, and it is the extreme rarity for a victim to actually have seen a spider, much less see one bite them.

According to Dr. Rick Vetter of the Univ. of California, who has been on a decades-long campaign to try to educate the medical community and news media, perhaps 95% of these skin lesions are not even related to insect bites or stings, but likely are bacterial infections, and currently many are likely due to MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureas – the “flesh eating bacteria”). To diagnose the skin lesion as a spider bite instead of a staph infection could then lead to incorrect treatment of it. The spider expert in Florida goes on to say that most people who truly have been bitten by a Recluse show no symptoms at all, but that only those with over-sensitive immune systems react badly. You may remember that home in Missouri where they trapped over 2000 recluse spiders one summer, just to see how many were in the house, and no one living there had ever been bitten nor was concerned about them.

But, just try to change the opinions of people, who are so strongly influenced by the media (which just LOVES scary stories) and the medical community (in whom they put complete faith). As Dr. Vetter stated it at a conference, being able to tell people you were bitten by a Violin Spider is like a a Badge of Honor, and much better than saying “I got a staph infection”. Heck, friends want to hear all about the spider bite, but probably run in horror from the disgusting staph infection. Bottom line is that a few confirmed brown recluse spiders, one here and there, have been found in Florida but always associated with materials recently brought into that location. There are no known resident populations of them, and all of those people who are reporting that they have been bitten by the recluse are wrong.

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QUESTION:

I have a customer who is getting bitten on her legs, but she has never seen what has bitten her. Last year she had another pest control company come and spray her house, but it didn’t help. I’m not sure if I can help, and not sure what to look for. I hope that you can give me something to go on.

ANSWER:

Let’s reword the situation just a bit and say it this way. You have a customer who is experiencing red marks on her legs and BELIEVES something is biting her, but has never seen any bug doing it. This really is all we know at this time, and this is one of the frustrating scenarios that so commonly occurs in our industry. I believe that the WORST thing a technician could do at this point is to go into this home and start spraying pesticides, essentially crossing his fingers and hoping that it accomplishes something. Our industry’s and university experts consistently tell us that there are many reasons that someone could experience bumps and rashes on their skin that have nothing to do with any arthropod, and therefore nothing to do with pest management. It is not our place, nor within our authority, to diagnose skin conditions, and again our experts tell us that even doctors really cannot confidently diagnose the cause of itchy bumps based solely on those bumps.

So, what then is our role as Pest Management Professionals? It is to determine if there IS some arthropod present in this home that could be responsible for “biting” the customer, and until that is verified you should adamantly avoid spraying anything. This may not set well with the customer, who already is convinced in her mind that it is bugs that are doing this, and she might well plead with you to “spray something just to be sure”, and that is only going to get you involved in a problem, because now you have added some toxic substances to the mix. Ultimately you may need to just walk away from this customer without doing anything other than inspecting, because if you are never able to verify that a biting pest is present there is nothing for you to do.

At this point I suggest you be confident and explain these limitations to her – that you are not permitted to apply any pest control chemicals until you know exactly what you are dealing with, and that you will do your best to try to capture any arthropods that may be in the home, have them properly identified, and then go from there. I know very well that a lot of other companies would just go ahead and spray and collect the cash, but this is just the wrong thing to do. However, your TIME is worth something, so you should be charging her for the time you spend placing insect glue traps, collecting them, and taking the time to scan those traps and identify what is on them. The local university where I spend a lot of my time provides an Identification Service, and charges $80 per hour to do it – your time should not be for free.

Get a box of insect glue traps and place them liberally around in this home, concentrating on places this person believes are the locations where the “bites” most often occur. Leave them there for a week, and then collect them and use good magnification to scan the glue and see what is on it. I so strongly suggest that a professional company should spend a few hundred dollars and buy a dissecting microscope for the office – BioQuip.com and UPMALabs.com are a couple of suppliers of good quality but inexpensive kinds. With this magnification you can reliably see what is on the glue. Also take some glue traps and a soft brush and sweep off of all surfaces in the home – tops of dressers, night stands, tables, etc. and onto the glue. Shake clothing or blankets over the glue. If something capable of biting her is present the odds are very good you will capture some.

But, if you make the best effort and still find no biting bugs then explain this to her and suggest she consult with a dermatologist, because there appears to be nothing there for you to do. Again – NO fogging, NO spraying. We must keep in mind too that many people in this country partake of certain lifestyles that may cause Delusory Parasitosis, and what you have described fits this medical condition perfectly – the invisible bugs biting someone. Pesticides are not going to repair this problem.

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QUESTION:

I have noticed in the last three months that on three occasions, I have run across people who use diatomaceous Earth in an attempt to control bed bugs. It is usually piled up on furniture, floors, beds, etc., and in one incident the dust was even thrown all over a box of boxes. I tell the customer to clean up the dust because it is a desiccant that will harm them. You can walk into the room and see the dust billowing in the air.
I cannot see any advantage to what they are doing except in their own minds.

ANSWER:

Diatomaceous Earth is actually a very effective dust for bed bugs, according to a study done by Dr. Mike Potter and others in 2009, where they compared various dust active ingredients on bed bugs. A very short summary of their results is that they found Tempo Dust to be the superior product (in their study), killing 100% of the exposed bugs within 24 hours, including resistant strains from New York and Ohio. Second was Drione Dust with 100% kill within 72 hours, and then DeltaDust and MotherEarth Dust with 100% kill taking 7 to 10 days. The dust that would NOT have any effect on bed bugs is boric acid, since this active ingredient needs to be ingested to have an effect, and bed bugs would be incapable of ingesting dusts.

The problem is that homeowners can buy anything and everything on the internet, and then use it without any knowledge of how it should be used, and this is what leads to most problems with pesticides. In your situations these people are horribly over-using the dust, and even though DE is relatively harmless to humans when used properly, once applied in this manner where they could be inhaling it there may be health concerns. It should not be inhaled, and excessive amounts on the skin could cause irritation to the skin with its drying effect. However, I would bet dollars to donuts that the websites they purchased this material from touted the dust as “nontoxic” and “safe” and “harmless”, giving the people the impression that no matter how they used it there could be no harm to them.

A dust becomes physically repellent to insects when the amount is so heavy that the bug is trying to wade through it. What this accomplishes may be nothing more than forcing the insect to find another path around the dust to get where it needs to go. An extremely light layer of dust is all that is needed, and once the bug gets a small amount of the dust onto its exoskeleton the work of the dust begins. The difference between DE and Drione is the mechanism of action, according to Mike Potter et. al. The silica aerogel dusts (Drione, Tri-Die) are both abrasive and sorptive, so they not only cut through the waxy layer of the exoskeleton, but also tend to absorb moisture from the bug, accelerating the process of dehydration of the bug. Diatomaceous Earth (MotherEarth D, Alpine D) are abrasive only, so they ultimately cause the same effect of dehydrating the bug, but take longer to do it. The pyrethrum in the Drione and Tri-Die probably help with knockdown as well.

So, nothing wrong with the use of DE for bed bug control, but you should attempt to help these customers to do it correctly, which they may not be equipped to do. Dusts should ONLY be used within closed voids where they will not get all over surfaces that people and pets then will contact. If they tell you that it’s okay, because the stuff is not toxic, be armed with some literature from universities that explains the possible health consequences of breathing too much of the desiccant materials. They should remove all of this dust, but to do so they should use a high efficiency vacuum that will remove the fine particles of the dust. Provide them with literature that explains that a single product or technique is not going to eliminate bed bugs, but that a multi-pronged approach is necessary. Prevention of bed bugs, which they could be attempting, is better done with traps and monitors designed to capture bed bugs, and if they do continue to use the dusts they should be applied into wall voids and crevices.

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QUESTION:

I’m familiar with how much wood over a period of time subterranean termites can eat, but I can’t find anything on how much wood drywood termites can eat. Can you help please?


ANSWER:

I looked through some references on termites and frankly couldn’t find any specific numbers put to this. So, the best I can offer is some comparison between the two kinds. Subterranean termites cause more damage than just the eating, as they tend to encourage moisture in the wood and this leads to decay fungus problems as well. But, ultimately both kinds of termites are capable of eating ALL the wood available to them. As it states in my Mallis book, drywood termites will eat every bit of the wood and leave just the paint behind, and we have all seen wood fed on by subterranean termites, where all that may be left is the harder “rings” of the wood.

The difference may be in how fast this can occur, and this is a function of colony size. Some subterranean species  can have colonies that max out at several hundred thousand workers, and of course the Formosan may have over a million workers in a colony. This represents a lot of little mandibles chewing off pieces of wood in a structure, so the damage from subs occurs quickly. I have heard from friends in Hawaii that a home may be so destroyed in just 6 months from Formosan termites that it is more economical to tear it down and rebuild than to try to repair all the damage. Drywood termite colonies may max out at just a few thousand workers, and typically in the western drywood a colony after 15 years of that colony’s existence there may be only 2700 workers in it. The queen just lays fewer eggs and the colony grows more slowly than the aggressive sub termites, where a queen could be laying 1000 eggs each day once the colony is well established.

Both kinds of termites will feed on virtually any species of wood, but drywoods cause us a problem because prevention is very difficult. We can keep subs out of a structure with a proper soil treatment or pretreating the wood with a borate, but drywoods may just fly into an attic and infest wood with no chemical barriers to stop them. Fortunately the range of drywoods is far less than that of subs, so much of the U.S. is without drywood termites. Looking around on the internet is always risky, because you can find a lot of opinions that may or may not be based on facts. However, one website stated that a sub colony of half a million workers will consume the equivalent of a 2 foot long 2×4 each year. Personally, that seems like a great under-estimate to me, but maybe it’s accurate. Formosans, according to this website, consume 6 times that amount, and that definitely seems like an understatement.

So, I’m limited to comparing, and I would suggest that Subterranean termites can do substantial damage within just a few years of feeding within a structure, whereas Drywood termites might be there for 20 years before serious structural weakening occurs.

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QUESTION:

How do you find pallet mice in a warehouse, with proper traps and and bait stations in place that seem to be ignored by the mice?

ANSWER:

By “pallet” mice I am assuming you mean House Mice that are living in amongst palleted product. One factor that puts things in your favor is having the ability to get to all sides of those pallets, so if this warehouse has the pallets stacked right against the walls, prohibiting you from getting to the wall itself for inspection, this must change. You need to get the cooperation of the warehouse personnel to enable you to help them. There probably should be a painted line in yellow, two feet out from each wall, and no product should be stacked inside this perimeter. Since mice and rats instinctively stay against vertical surfaces, their most likely route of travel much of the time will be immediately against that wall, and this is where most of your stations and traps should be set.

It also is a fact that peridomestic rodents just hate changes. They become very comfortable in a setting if things stay in place, and when they first enter a new environment they spend a great deal of time investigating and marking things to get a good picture in their mind of where food and shelter are found and where safe pathways exist. Just in case there is any clutter sitting for long periods in this warehouse it should be removed or at least moved and placed onto pallets. It would be of value to use a UV flashlight during your inspections, and some very convenient portalbe UV lights are available now from Univar. In a darkened warehouse the UV will cause fresh rodent urine to fluoresce, with the most recent urine a light blue and older urine a yellowish color. This could be helpful in determining where their little pathways and other activity are, and you may find that your stations are simply not where the rodents are spending their time.

All of this rambling is to suggest that you may have traps and stations in place but they and the mice are just not encountering each other. As Dr. Corrigan tells us in his rodent control seminars, we need to avoid a cookie-cutter approach to rodent control. They may travel 100 feet to find food or only 3 feet if that is all it takes. They travel vertically just as well as horizontally. If these mice are hiding in the pallets and finding food there they may not have any reason to leave, and thus will not encounter your stations. Inspect the environment there carefully to decide where the mice are harboring and where they are finding food, and place your traps between these two points in locations where the mice will likely travel. And, use LOTS of traps to increase the chances of catching them.

Of course, simply managing a mouse problem by trying to kill each of them after they enter is a never ending solution – maybe good job security, or maybe not. Ultimately you should find as many ways as possible to keep the mice outside where they can be dealt with in a less-sensivite situation. This includes habitat management both inside and outside, exclusion, and the use of perimeter stations around the outside of the buildings as well as the perimeter of the property.

But, on the inside it may be that you need to verify where these rodents are actually living and traveling, increase the numbers of traps and other stations, and enhance the attraction to them with attractants such as Provoke or Trapper jacks or other really tempting goodies that mice will detect and investigate. Make sure the customer is cooperating and doing what they can to disrupt the environment inside so that the mice are not comfortable and are forced to move as much as possible. Place snap traps inside covered stations, as this may even encourage the mice to enter to investigate this little burrow.

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QUESTION:

My neighbor has a bird mite problem from handling a sick pigeon. I told her to take benadryl. How do we get rid of the mites themselves?

ANSWER:

I can’t resist the temptation to toss out a couple of thoughts. First, just be careful when you offer medical advice, since we never know how someone might react to a medication, even as simple as benadryl. I guess this would be an appropriate medication for relieving itching from bites, but if this lady did have an allergic reaction to it she might decide you were to blame. Just a thought. Second, and I try not to be smug while saying it, this points out one more reason that those lovely, cute little “rock doves” can be nasty pest problems that we should evict from our homes and businesses. They routinely carry large numbers of parasites and are happy to share them with people.

There is good news. First, bird mites do not vector any diseases to humans, so it is just the biting and itching that are the consequences. Second, these mites apparently cannot sustain themselves if no birds are available. They may bite humans when hungry, but will not produce more generations of themselves, so in a sense the infestation would die out on its own. However, this could take longer than the neighbor chooses to allow, and to have them annoying him in the meantime.

Control begins with eliminating the source of the mites, which is birds, and if these mites came only from a single bird he was handling then it could be that there is no infestation within his home. He may only have gotten some mites that transferred onto him when he was handling this ill rat-with-wings……… I mean, pigeon. Showering and laundering all clothing he was wearing at the time could do the trick. If the bird or some of its friends were nesting in his home somewhere, or roosting outside, then perhaps the mites did begin to move about inside the home, and this gets tough to eliminate. Consider how small an opening is needed for those microscopic mites to move around and through, and you see they could be anywhere inside the structure – attic, wall voids, interior rooms, etc. Thorough vacuuming of every surface helps remove many of them, and you could apply a residual insecticide along likely travel routes to intercept the mites.

I suggest you place a lot of insect glue traps throughout his home and inspect them very carefully with good magnification in about one week. If you find no mites then hopefully the problem was very localized, and if you do find mites then it tells you where to focus your attention. You could fog or dust the attic (a desiccant dust especially) or fog within wall voids using a void injector.

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QUESTION:

Please explain the obvious differences between mouse scat and water bug droppings. What should we look for other then hair? Fibers can easily be mistaken for hair. Can you suggest an observation that can be determined while servicing, without any magnification?

ANSWER:

I guess I would start with the suggestion that magnification would be something you should always have available as you do inspections. This can be as simple and convenient as a hand lens magnifier that you can carry in your pocket, and these can be purchased for just a few dollars online, from some Univar offices, and from scientific suppliers like BioQuip (a link to them is on PestWeb). The best one I have seen in awhile I recently acquired, and it is 30X power with a built in LED light that makes it ideal for use in darkened settings, such as you might encounter in a warehouse. These are not just for looking at animal droppings, but necessary anytime you find some small insect, such as food or fabric pests, or need to examine a glue trap to see what those little spots really are. Are they bugs or dirt? Are they mites or beetles or springtails or psocids? Being able to properly identify what you encounter is critical to going about control procedures in the proper manner, and if you can do this in the field it saves time and effort.

Just for your info, and I don’t mean to advertise someone else’s product, but this hand lens is called Illuminate Loupe (Ledlight) 30X-25mm, and I found it online under that description for very low cost. With this, then, you can break apart something like a fecal pellet and examine its makeup, and this is the best way to determine the likely previous owner of that pellet. There are other hints with regard to the appearance, such as a “shiny” pellet that crumbles easily in the fingers is probably a bat dropping, and if you can identify the presence of insect body parts in that pellet (legs, body plates, wing covers) then you know it is a carnivore, perhaps the bat or maybe a lizard or frog. For those doing structural pest control you may be able to verify or dismiss whether the pellets are drywood termites, powderpost beetles, or carpenter ant frass.

Water bugs are, of course, cockroaches, and the larger species such as American and Oriental do produce fecal droppings that may be about the same size and shape as a dropping from the house mouse. The best difference is going to be the presence of hair in the mouse dropping, due to its habit of frequently grooming itself and swallowing hair. It may also be more common to find larger pieces of undigested grain or plant materials in the mouse dropping, whereas the cockroach dropping would be more likely to have a fairly consistent makeup due to its food being ground to a much finer paste during its passage through the throat and internal organs. But, you do need the magnification to see this, and without the close up look you could make a pretty good guess based on external appearance, but if that guess turns out to be wrong then your control program could be for the wrong pest.

Along with the recognition that it is one or the other – mouse or roach – you can place glue traps where the pathway of the pest appears to be, and verify the ID by catching something. If you find droppings and suspect mice you could verify this with a UV flashlight that should illuminate urine spots along the same area. Mice tend to urinate so darned often. You might also find other evidence if it is a rodent – smudge marks, gnawing, etc. Distinguishing between mouse and large roach droppings, as well as cricket droppings, probably is the most confusing distinction in scatology, so it would be advisable to use more than just a naked-eye examination to be sure. In general, the mouse dropping is going to be pointed at one (or both) end, but not always, so examine several droppings to be sure. In general insect droppings usually have more blunted ends, but again not always. Insect droppings also tend to be more rectangular or cylindrical in shape than the irregular shape of rodent droppings. You might even see lengthwise depressions in the roach droppings (but only with magnification) created by the anal muscles pressing down on the pellet prior to its exit from the roach’s body.

And you folks thought Scatology was boring. This kind of stuff is good opening material in a social setting.

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QUESTION:

We have been treating a yard for moles with Talpirid. However, they always return. Is there something better that I should be using, or is this normal? I would like to know more about moles if you could explain about them.

ANSWER:

The basics of moles is that they are solitary carnivores, living alone except during breeding season and mating time, and feeding primarily on earthworms and insects in the soil, such as beetle larvae. They will also nibble on small amounts of plant material, but the damage to plants is minimal and the primary problem with moles is the raising tunnels they burrow along the surface in their feeding forays. These tunnels can cause an unsightly appearance to nicely maintained lawns, and may encourage faster drying of the soil that might harm the turf. They live completely underground, usually with a main chamber and living area away from the turf, and often around the roots of large shrubs or trees. From here they burrow main tunnels fairly deep in the soil and then come to the surface to burrow the feeding tunnels, where they are more likely to encounter grubs and other insects that feed on the turf.

Moles have always avoided rodent baits, but the Talpirid from Bell Labs offers that unique form and texture of an earthworm, so with a little luck the mole can be fooled into believing it has stumbled onto a wonderful meal if the Talpirid is placed in its path. This product seems to be working very, very well for mole control, but one fact of Nature is that it “hates a void”, and if you remove all of the animals of one kind in some habitat, it quickly will be replenished by others of that kind of animal from outside this area. Populations of all living things increase with reproduction, and then they compete with each other for resources. By removing all the competition from some place where food and habitat still are available, it is an invitation for new moles to enter and set up their home. Mole and gopher control should be considered an ongoing effort, rather than a 1-shot-and-we’re-done-with-it service. The customer needs to understand this as well so they don’t think you left some moles behind just to keep the business going.

Mole control also is done very successfully with traps, but trapping can be extremely time-consuming and takes some expertise. The amount of time you would have to charge the customer for to dig holes down into main runways, set traps, cover the holes again, and then come back to check and reset the traps might be cost prohibitive. A single mole might cost that customer a couple hundred dollars for your time, and moles can be pretty sneaky about setting off the traps without getting caught. The effective bait is done much more quickly.

Mole repellents also exist, and these may provide some effectiveness if placed correctly. They do not last very long, and would need to be replenished frequently if they are expected to keep moles out of the area. Most seem to be based on castor oil, and may be applied directly into their feeding tunnels if you determine the tunnel is still actively used, or applied to the overall surface and watered in. Keep in mind this does not eliminate moles, but in a sense just pushes them out of the immediate area, so the pressure for them to return is always there if the repellent dissipates.

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