Pests Aren't Fun to Deal With, but Someone Has to Do It

Most of a pest control technician's day is not spraying. It is inspection, crawling into spaces nobody else goes, identifying what is actually there, and finding the entry point or the moisture that caused it. The product is the last and smallest part. A pest control technician who only sprays is doing a fraction of the job.

There is a version of this job people picture: a person with a tank and a wand, walking a perimeter.

That is about ten percent of it, and it is the least important ten percent. Here is what the rest looks like, partly because it is really interesting and partly because knowing it tells you what to expect from anyone you hire.

A technician spends far more of the call looking than treating. Most of a typical home visit goes to inspection: walking around the outside of the house, getting into the crawl space, and checking the attic. The technician also looks behind and under things and reads the evidence the pests leave behind.

The evidence is where the skill comes in. Droppings show which pest it is and roughly how long it has been there. Rub marks along a joist show where the pests travel. Sawdust-like droppings near a window frame mean something is tunneling into the wood, and that usually points to moisture. Webbing in one corner and not another shows where air moves and where insects travel. A person who is not looking for these signs will miss them, and every one of them changes the plan.

Finding the way in decides whether the work lasts. If a house is treated and the entry point stays open, the pests come back through it. Finding the gap is harder than treating the pest, and it matters more.

The job is physical and seasonal, and it is often uncomfortable. Crawl spaces in older Littleton and Denver-area homes are tight and cold, and nobody wants to meet what lives in them. Attics in August are brutal. A good share of the work is done on a ladder, on a roof edge, or lying under a house.

The seasons swing hard, starting in spring, when wasp queens and ants wake up. Summer brings stinging insects at full colony strength, and more ants push indoors. Fall is the heaviest season, when rodents and spiders move toward houses and buildings all at the same time. In winter the work moves indoors and gets quieter, and the rodent problem that was ignored in October becomes urgent.

Part of the job has nothing to do with insects. People call when they are stressed, and some are embarrassed or even frightened. Someone who has found bed bugs at midnight is not calm. A good technician handles that moment as carefully as the treatment, because it is part of the work too.

The inspection matters more because a treatment only deals with the pests that are there today. The conditions in and around the house decide what will be there next month. Treating without an inspection means guessing at the species, the size of the problem, and the way in. A guess that happens to be right is still a guess.

Knowing this helps when you choose a pest control company. Before any treatment starts, someone should find out what the problem is and how the pests got in. Without that step, you pay for a spray that leaves the cause in place. The pests you can see will drop off, but the conditions stay the same. When the problem comes back, it will look as if the spray did not work.

Ask what the inspection includes. Call Guardian Pest Management at (303) 346-7087, and we will explain what ours includes before you book.

None of these five things is complicated.

• Do not clean up before we arrive. The droppings, the webbing, the dead insects on the sill: that is the evidence. Vacuuming it removes the information the visit depends on.
• Save the specimen. A photograph is good, the actual insect in a sealed container is better. Identification is faster and more certain from the real thing.
• Say what you already tried. Nobody is judging it. Some products interact badly with what follows, so knowing changes the approach.
• Access matters more than you think. The crawl space hatch blocked by storage, the attic behind a full closet, the side yard packed with bins. Those are exactly where the answer usually is.
• Early is dramatically cheaper. Almost every pest problem is smaller and less expensive in the first weeks than in the third month. Waiting is the most expensive decision available.

If you have something you would rather have looked at than guessed at, call Guardian Pest Management at (303) 346-7087.

Guardian Pest Management is family owned. Sean and Michelle Meade have run it since 2000. We serve Highlands Ranch, Littleton, Castle Rock, Parker, Centennial, Lone Tree, Castle Pines, Greenwood Village, Roxborough, and Cherry Hills. Sean and Michelle personally bring more than 30 years of pest control industry experience, earned before Guardian was founded. That was earned before Guardian opened. We hold a 5.0-star Google rating in South Metro Denver.

Our pest control technicians inspect first and treat second, and they explain what they found in plain language rather than handing over a form. We use EPA-registered products applied according to label instructions, by licensed technicians.

Home service does not require a long-term contract. If pests come back between visits, ask for a follow-up, and we will come out again at no charge.

Call Guardian Pest Management at (303) 346-7087, or start at myguardianpest.com.

Related reading: When a pest problem is worth calling about; Whether quarterly pest control is actually necessary; Secondary poisoning, and what it means for pets and wildlife.