Mosquito and Tick Control

Tick and mosquitoes are two harmful and possibly life-threatening pests that can hinder everyday life. This reality is no different for those living in Plymouth County. To keep residents safe and pest-free, it’s vital to have swift, effective and environmentally-friendly methods for mosquito and tick control in the Cape Cod area.

Pest Pros is your local Cape Cod-area solution to mosquito and tick problems. Since we focus on communities like yours and mainly deal with residential areas, we tackle each case with care, proficiency and always aim to exceed expectations. If pest problems go unresolved, they could become a dangerous threat to anyone who encounters them. We’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Mosquito Control: Why It’s Important

Mosquitoes are a formidable foe, with over 200 species in the United States. By knowing these basic facts about mosquitoes, it will be easier to understand how they negatively affect those around them and how populations can easily grow without the help of professionals.

• Life Cycle: Mosquitoes have a four-stage life cycle: egg, larvae, pupa and adult.

• Breeding: Stagnant, dirty water provides the ideal environment for mosquitoes to lay their eggs. Standing water naturally occurs in places such as swamps and puddles, but this also includes water collected in everyday items. Watch out for water in flowerpots, buckets and even shoes left outside.
• Sustenance: You may already know this one. Female mosquitoes, the only ones that bite, feed on blood. Because female mosquitoes often come in contact with humans and animals, there’s a chance they carry a disease that can be spread with each bite from host to host. They also carry parasites that can affect animals such as dogs and horses.
• Harmful Effects: Mosquitoes can potentially spread many types of diseases. According to the EPA, these diseases can cause deadly and disabling effects.
• Malaria — This disease has symptoms of fever, chills, gastrointestinal issues such as nausea or vomiting and can affect the person’s mental state.
• West Nile virus — While the EPA states that 70-80% of people do not show symptoms, there is a small but potentially lethal chance that the person might contract meningitis. People 60 years and older have a higher chance of contracting this dangerous disease that could take weeks or even months to recover.

• Zika virus — While some people may not exhibit symptoms or not have them to the full extent, Zika can lead to fever, headaches or joint pain. The trouble with this virus is that people aren’t always aware of infection and can go undiagnosed due to the mildness of the symptoms, which means the virus can spread from person to person.
• Dengue virus — Usual symptoms of Dengue are a high fever, severe headache, pain in joints and mild bleeding. Other symptoms include constant vomiting, continuous bleeding from the nose or gums and difficulty breathing.

Mosquitoes that carry diseases are dangerous, and the non-carriers are still nuisances. Reducing the populations through careful planning, meticulous implementation, and professional expertise is required to keep people safe.

How You Can Control Mosquitoes

Professionals know the telltale signs and can evaluate if a certain area is susceptible to a higher mosquito population. So they can enact the most efficient, time-sensitive and successful techniques to solve the problem, professionals gather information by monitoring these signs:

• Local Complaints: If a specific area keeps calling to complain about mosquitoes, chances are the community is involuntarily hosting a large population. Areas could be afflicted due to weather that promotes humidity and rain, giving the mosquitoes ideal conditions for living.
• Mosquito Trap: This machine attracts female mosquitoes and traps them inside, so experts can analyze their data after collecting a sample size. Experts look at the number of mosquitoes caught, and they test if the mosquitoes are carrying harmful diseases.
• Landing Rate: A mosquito control worker will go to an area with mosquitoes and count how many land on them after a minute. This usually happens at either dusk or dawn, when the mosquitoes are most active. While this is a simple technique, it also mimics what locals in the area experience when they go outside.Managing local mosquito populations is more than spraying chemicals in the air a few times a week. By obtaining methods for each stage of the mosquito’s life cycle, experts have options and more opportunities to stop these pests at the source.
• Larval Stage: Mosquitoes can be stopped before they mature. By targeting them at the larval stage with larvicides, the population is kept down and the area providing the ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes is identified. Some larvicides prevent food digestion so the mosquitoes starve, while others inhibit growth or affect the nervous system.
• Mosquitofish: A chemical-free option, this method occurs at the larval stage, too. Mosquitofish can be introduced into a body of water with a high mosquito population. These fish feed on the larvae and can survive in harsh conditions, such as low oxygen levels in the water. However, it’s worth noting that these are predatory fish, and could potentially decrease the local frog and smaller fish populations, which could disrupt the ecosystem.
• Adult Stage: While spraying insecticides is probably the most common idea of population control, this is a practice used when mosquitoes are mature and in the adult stage. At this point, spraying chemicals, or adulticides, is the direction needed to decrease the population. In cases of high populations, these sprays can be administered by professionals on the ground or by an aircraft carrier.

Our Mosquito Control Process

Our process is about expertise, timeliness and effectiveness. We aim to go above and beyond with each case and make sure you’re happy with the result of our work.

• Inspections: We offer free inspections to get an idea of the problem you’re facing. By filling out the contact sheet and explaining the issue, we will prepare and plan for the inspection according to your specific needs. One of our highly skilled experts will conduct the inspection with intense observation, acute focus and courteous attentiveness to your concerns.
• Our Focus: Our certified professionals vetted by the Massachusetts Pesticide Bureau work on counteracting, regulating and eliminating mosquitoes. We aim to get results you want so you no longer have to worry about these issues.
• Treatment: We treat around the yard by consciously seeking out areas where ticks and mosquitos nest. We apply an insecticide through mist blowers which allows us to get superior coverage in hard to reach areas.Mosquitoes aren’t the only major pests of the summer. Ticks can also cause major problems for people and animals. Occurring in many sizes with about 850 species, ticks are generally difficult to spot, making them a threat that could be easily missed. Once they’re noticed, it’s vital to take care of the problem as soon as possible.

Tick Control: Why It’s Important

It’s important to understand the life cycle, breeding habits and issues ticks bring with them when they’re present in your yard, and how to safely remove them from your body or your pets and family members.

• Life Cycle: Ticks have a four-stage life cycle: eggs, larvae, nymph and adult. With a relatively short life span of about three feedings before they reproduce and perish, these pests then lay eggs in protected areas and the progression continues.
• Breeding: Ticks don’t need much to survive — just humidity and a host. Active mostly from April to October, ticks live and breed in damp grassy areas. They need to tall grasses =to get to their hosts because they can’t jump.
• Sustenance: Like mosquitoes, ticks feed on blood and can transmit disease. Hosts can be humans or animals such as dogs and deer. Because ticks hop from host to host, they can potentially pick up and spread disease.
• Harmful Effects: It’s essential to take care of tick problems as soon as they occur. If left unchecked, they can do a lot of harm. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ticks carry the “most diseases of any arthropod.” There are about 300,000 cases per year of people affected with Lyme disease in the U.S.
• Lyme Disease — Usually transmitted from deer ticks biting humans, Lyme disease is a dilapidating illness. Symptoms of Lyme disease include a large bulls-eye rash, headaches, heart palpitations and joint pain. The EPA states that within the first 24 hours, the Lyme organism isn’t usually transmitted from the infected tick to the host. If you find a tick feeding, remain calm and remove it immediately. Then visit your doctor to monitor with testing.
• Other Diseases — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists other diseases that ticks can spread, such as anaplasmosis, the Powassan virus and ehrlichiosis. These typically have similar symptoms of fevers, headaches and nausea after a tick bite, but can develop more serious effects if they go unchecked.
• Protect Yourself — Before the professionals can get to you and get rid of the tick infestation, you should follow these tips to stay safe until the problem is solved.
• Identification — What do ticks even look like? They can be the size of a sesame seed or a bit larger after they’ve fed, but mostly ticks are very small. They have a head, a body and eight legs.
• Avoid the Tick-Infested Area — This seems to go without saying, but try not to go where ticks are concentrated. If you must, cover up with long-sleeved clothes and pull your socks over your pants so there’s no access for ticks.
• Removal Process: If you find a tick on yourself, another person or a pet such as a dog, it’s important to know how to remove the tick safely and accurately.
  • Remain Calm — It might be startling at first to discover a tick on you, but the sooner you gain control and can move forward with the removal process, the sooner that tick will be gone.
  • Get the Proper Tools — A pair of pointy, sharp tweezers will be your best option. Grasp the tick as close to the head as you can get. Pull upwards with a steady motion so the mouth doesn’t break off. Keep pulling until the mouth is out. Once the tick is removed, clean the bite thoroughly and dispose of the tick. You can flush it down the toilet or seal it in a bag and throw it away. Do not crush the tick with your fingers.

How You Can Control Ticks

There are many ways you can modify your yard to help prevent tick infestations in the future. However, if they’re already there, you’re going to need professional help to get rid of them.

Once you call in the pros, you can then follow these tips from the CDC to help keep your yard free of ticks:

• Mow the lawn on a regular basis. Preventing your grass from growing too tall will help keep ticks away. Remember, they need tall grass to climb and latch on to hosts, so remove this chance by keeping the grass trim and neat.

• Clear lawn of dead leaves and sticks. Removing brush from your lawn takes away hiding places and breeding areas for ticks. This also takes away more ways for them to climb and attach to a host. Make sure to keep up with this especially in September and October when leaves are covering the ground.
• Place outdoor furniture away from trees. Ticks can get onto your furniture by climbing from low-hanging branches. Keep your furniture away from trees, dense shrubs and bushes.
• Consider putting a barrier between lawns and wooded areas. Gravel could help ticks from moving in to your yard. You could even place a physical barrier such as a fence to keep away deer or rodents that could potentially be carrying ticks.

Our Tick Control Process:

While the strategies above can help you reduce the tick population in your yard, hiring a professional like Pest Pros is a smart choice. We can help keep your yard tick-free with professional advice and solutions:

• We’re Professionals: As leading experts in our field, Pest Pros knows what it takes to get rid of a Cape Cod tick infestation. Our fast-acting, reliable and eco-conscious methods will eliminate the ticks from your yard and allow you to enjoy the outdoors again.
• We’re Here to Fix the Problem: We offer free inspections and free estimates so you have all the facts. There won’t be any surprises or confusion during this process. We’re here to help you get your yard back in a timely, safe and thorough manner.
• Treatment: We treat around the yard by consciously seeking out areas where ticks nest. We apply an insecticide through mist blowers which allows us to get superior coverage in hard to reach areas. This helps us to eliminate ticks quickly.

Why Hire a Professional for Mosquito and Tick Control?

At Pest Pros, we strive for the highest quality pest control services. As our work focuses mainly on towns, our commitment to helping you solve your mosquito and tick problem is so you can enjoy being outdoors again as soon as possible.

While there are small actions you can do to handle a few irksome mosquitoes or an occasional tick, swarms and infestations should be left to the professionals. We’re trained and certified in getting rid of these pests in a dependable, safe and eco-friendly way.

It can be dangerous to spray all kinds of chemicals on your yard. This could potentially harm you, other people, pets, non-pest wildlife or plants you want to keep growing and appreciating. Our green solutions combine nature and science and target your specific problems while keeping the rest of your yard healthy.

Don’t let mosquitoes and ticks keep you from experiencing the glorious outdoors. Contact us today and we’ll make sure to get rid of the pests so you can get back to enjoying all the outdoor activities Cape Cod offers.