What You Need To Know About Pests In Tucson, AZ
Protecting your Arizona home and yard from insects, weeds, and other pests is essential. Our houses and outdoor spaces are most people's largest investments, and protecting them from damage is important. In addition to guarding our property and protecting ourselves and our family from the potential dangers pests can create is also important. To help you, BCL Yard Services has put together a helpful pest guide. Read below to learn more about our area's most prevalent pests, including what attracts them and steps you can take to prevent problems with these unwanted intruders.
Ants
Ants are a common household pest regularly spotted around our Arizona homes and businesses. Ants cause widespread pest problems because they have easy access to food, water, and sometimes shelter in our yards and structures. No matter the reason why they are there, they need to be eliminated as quickly as possible. Ants can cause structural damage, contaminate food, and some species can deliver painful bites and stings. In addition, ants are social creatures that live together in large colonies, giving them the benefit of having strength in numbers. Every single ant and nesting site must be found and treated to eliminate an infestation and prevent a fast reinfestation.
Ants are omnivores and will feed on many types of food, including many of the foods we eat. Because they eat what we eat, it is common to see them trailing around our gardens, trash cans, recycling bins, and outdoor eating areas — ants are well-known for ruining picnics! Once ants have discovered a source of food on your property, they will keep returning and eventually find their way inside your home. Usually, while in search of food or water or to escape harsh weather conditions, ants will find a way into your homes through small cracks and openings they discover in its exterior. If you are seeing ants trailing around your home, a nest is nearby either outside or inside. Favorite nesting spots include under rocks, landscaping ties, mulch, and bare areas of our yards. Inside they like to nest in insulation, near water pipes or leaky appliances, and under floors.
Use the following tips to help keep ants from taking over your Tucson, AZ indoor or outdoor spaces.
- Remove brush piles, fallen trees, rocks, and other debris from your yard that ants will nest under or within.
- Block off access points into your home by sealing spaces in the foundation, placing door sweeps on exterior doors, and making sure weatherstripping is intact around windows and doors.
- Keep lids on trash cans and recycling bins that can provide a food source for ants.
- Inside and outside your home, keep eating and food storage areas clean and free of leftover food, crumbs, and spills.
- Regularly clean your home, not forgetting to sweep out under and behind your home's large appliances.
Cockroaches
Like ants, spiders, and mice, cockroaches are very common household pests that most homeowners will have to deal with at one time or another. Several species have adapted to living near people in order to take advantage of the food, water, and shelter our properties offer. Having a basic understanding of what cockroaches look like is important so that you can quickly spot their presence in your home and immediately reach out for professional help to eliminate the prolific breeders from your house. Adult cockroaches have a flat, oval-shaped body that is usually dark brown, red, or black, and some may have identifying markings on them. Most cockroaches have wings, but they aren't known for their flying abilities; when you spot a cockroach in your home, you will see them scurrying across surfaces not flying through the air.
Having cockroaches in our homes is not only unsettling, but it is also quite dangerous. These pests are not known for their cleanliness because they are regular visitors to trash cans, sewers, drains, and piles of decaying organic matter or excrement. They carry on their bodies many different kinds of parasites, human pathogens, and bacteria. When in our homes, they cause contamination as they crawl across surfaces or food with things that can make us quite ill. They also will stain surfaces and upholstered furniture with their excrement and chew on and damage fabrics, boxes, and other personal items. In addition to food, moisture is highly attractive to cockroaches that live in Arizona and often draws them into our homes. Their high moisture needs and food drive is why these pests are so problematic in our kitchens, bathrooms, basements, and crawl spaces.
Use the following tips to help keep cockroaches from taking over your Tucson, AZ business or home.
- Cockroaches can find their way into our homes any time of the year; remaining vigilant against these pests is vital.
- Seal spaces in your home's exterior, foundation, and around wires and pipes to help cockroaches from being able to move into your home.
- Cockroaches also hitchhike their way into structures. Always inspect secondhand appliances, furniture, and things like boxes and deliveries for cockroaches before bringing the items into your home.
- Reduce moisture levels by repairing leaky pipes and ensuring your kitchen and bathroom have good ventilation.
Grass Removal
Maintaining green, healthy lawns in Arizona is difficult. Our average rainfall is much less than in other parts of the country. Lawns require a lot of water to remain healthy, green, and lush. Some grasses like Bermudagrass can do well in Arizona, but many people want to trade in the work that it takes to maintain a yard and replace it with landscaping that is more natural in the desert setting that we live in.
Benefits of removing your property's lawn:
- Makes it easier to irrigate your property in the most efficient manner possible.
- Requires less maintenance.
- Helps promote a more healthy ecosystem. Maintaining a variety of landscaping plants in your outdoor space can help encourage bio-diversity.
- Makes your outdoor space less difficult to manage.
- Creates a landscape that is better able to thrive in our local climate.
If you want to learn more about removing your yard's grassy areas and replacing them with another more sustainable material, reach out to BCL Yard Services today! We can remove your property's grass and install an irrigation system that will help you maintain a landscape more natural to our region.
Scorpions
If you live in Arizona, you are living in an area of our country where scorpions thrive. Our desert climate and hot weather allow these pests to be active, feeding and breeding throughout most of the year. Despite loving our heat, these arachnids do have high moisture needs, and the sources of water they find in our yards are a big reason why these pests become a problem for Arizona homeowners. Things like leaky pipes, dripping hoses, or trickling air conditioners will draw scorpions to your yard and the exterior of your home. Scorpions are predators and feed on other living things, mainly insects. Yard and homes with a lot of insect activity are also places scorpions want to be. A large population of scorpions on your property could be an indicator of an insect infestation.
Scorpions are unique-looking pests. Though they are easy to identify, their ability to camouflage themselves makes it difficult to spot these pests. Hiding in plain sight on trees, walls, sinks, and in things like boxes, clothing, and bedding allows these pests to build large populations before being discovered. Scorpions have brown or brownish-yellow bodies, well-formed claws, and segmented tails that curve up and over their bodies. At the end of their tail is a stinger, which makes them a threat to their prey and to people. They use their stinger to paralyze their prey or defend themselves against threats. Though scorpion stings are rarely life-threatening, depending on the species, a sting can create serious health problems that need to be managed by a health professional.
Use the following tips to help keep scorpions from taking over your Tucson, AZ home or business.
- Repair areas on your property that collect standing water.
- Quickly fix leaky pipes, fixtures, air conditioners, and ventilation systems.
- Wipe away excess moisture from sinks and bathtubs.
- Repair cracks in the foundation or exterior walls and seal spaces around utilities entering your home to keep scorpions and their prey out.
- To protect yourself from accidental stings, wear gloves when gardening or rummaging through storage boxes, shake out bedding, and folded towels or clothing or shoes that have been in storage.
Spiders
Like scorpions, spiders live in large populations throughout Arizona, are predatory arachnids, and some have venom potent enough to affect people's health. Spiders have an unsightly appearance and use their eight legs to move quickly from place to place, startling us with their quick movements. While spiders are essential and help control numbers of insects that cause harm to people and our lawns and gardens, they are not welcome to take over our Arizona yards and homes.
Spiders tend to thrive in our region because there is plenty of prey for them to hunt. The warm, humid weather allows many insects to be active year-round. Areas of our yard that are naturally conducive to a lot of spider activity include gardens, trees, flowerbeds, areas of mulch, and spaces under decks. When spiders live near the outside of your home, it is easy for them to move inside while following their prey or looking for a quiet, safe place to lay their eggs. Having a large number of spiders moving through your yard or home is a sign that there a large number of insects living nearby that you must eliminate. Controlling the number of spiders on your property goes hand in hand with maintaining your property's overall insect activity.
Use the following tips to help keep spiders from taking over your Tucson, AZ indoor or outdoor spaces.
- Regularly clean indoor and outdoor eating areas to avoid attracting insects to either space.
- Help lower your property's insect activity by keeping lids on trash cans and recycling bins, keeping outdoor lights off as much as possible, and maintaining gardens.
- Reduce excess moisture in and around your home by repairing leaking pipes, fixtures, and air conditioners.
- Keep the inside of your home organized; this will make it much easier to discover a problem with spiders before their numbers get too large and difficult to manage.
Weeds
Like insects and wild animals that are considered pests, weeds are also considered pests that take over our yards, are unwanted, and can cause us a lot of grief and aggravation. Weeds are plants that get into our yards and grow where we don't want them to. These plants have characteristics whose negatives outweigh their benefits. Their ability to grow almost anywhere allows these plants to take over outdoor spaces, growing fast and using up nutrients before our wanted grasses and landscaping plants can.
There are many reasons why weeds will take over your Arizona yard. While any yard can become overrun by fast-growing weeds, yards with bare spots and unfertilized grass may be more susceptible to weeds. Another reason that weeds are so successful is that they produce so many seeds. The mass amount of seeds carried throughout the environment by the wind, animals, and insects ensure that the plants survive. In addition to ruining the aesthetics of your lawn, there are other reasons to put in place the services necessary to control weeds and stop them from taking over your yard. Flowering weeds often trigger allergy symptoms in people, their flowers also attract stinging insects, and tall weeds provide a resting spot for many unwanted insects.
Use the following tips to help keep weeds from taking over your Tucson, AZ yard.
- Mow your lawn to its ideal height, not too high or too short.
- Reseed your lawn's bare spots.
- Use mulch in flowerbeds and landscaped areas to help smother weeds.
- Make sure to fertilize your grass correctly.
- Partner with the local lawn care professional at BCL Yard Services
