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17.5 Key West. Father purchased new in 2000. Mainly used for fishing on Lake Ivy. Figuring around 300 hours. Serviced regularly. Includes Garmin GPS, Great White 24 volt trolling motor & top $8000.

Christmas Tree Bugs

There's nothing like the smell of evergreen needles to get you in the holiday spirit. But when you bring a live or cut Christmas tree indoors, some of the insects that call your Christmas tree home might be joining you for the holiday season. Here's what you need to know about Christmas tree insects. What Damage Can Christmas Tree Insects Do In My Home? You really don't need to worry about bringing any dangerous or destructive pests inside with your Christmas tree. The hitchhiking insects make their homes in coniferous forests. Your home isn't appropriate habitat for these insects, and they aren't going to move in for good. Lacking food and adequate humidity to survive, most Christmas tree insects die soon after moving indoors.

Mosquito False Advertising

Watch out for the fine print when dealing with companies claiming to be able to spray away mosquitoes- or even fog your yard for control. These treatments might last 2-3 days, and even with that will not 100% control mosquitoes. In years past, individual cities would send out fogging trucks. This works very well. Due to budget cuts, it's left to the HOA's to contract private companies to fog their neighborhoods. Some will, some will not - incur the cost. For homeowners, you're left with just a few options that work. There are Mosquito Misting stations on the market that work well or simply having regular pest control maintenance is very helpful. The regularity will keep mosquitoes from ever becoming an issue.

Bed Bugs only in ONE room??

That's a loaded question. 99.9% of the time...when bed bugs are present in ONE room, they are also in other rooms. You may not notice them at the same time, but they're generally there.

Heat vice Chemical Bed Bug Treatments

​A) Heat treatments are expensive and less reliable than chemical treatments. Reason being; When the correct chemicals and procedures are used, you receive a residual affect (the product continues to work AFTER the treatment). With heat, there is zero residual affect. B) Heat treatments demand A LOT of prep work (just to have a chance to work correctly). Reason being...the bed bug itself - not the air - must reach a temp of at least 140-150 degrees and be sustained for numerous hours (this means the air temp must be much higher to penetrate walls, box springs, etc). Part of the prep process involves removing anything plastic from the home, to prevent it from melting (including mini blinds, TV's, remotes, etc). You basically need to move out for a day. C) Insulation on wiring inside walls begins to melt at 170 degree. This can pose a short circuit issue in the future and possibly a fire. ​D) Many cases have been reported that DURING treatment homes catch fire: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Bed-Bug-Treatment-Radiant-Heat-Fire-Ice-Debate-Hazards-214087061.html Professionals using heat treatments have burned down buildings in other cities. See: Dayton, Ohio: A bed bug heat treatment set fire to a home. Manchester, New Hampshire: Blaze caused by heaters used by pest control company. Edmonton, Canada: Radiant heat treatments caused a large blaze that had 60 firefighters called in to put out a fire in a four story apartment building that had $3.5 million in damage. Cincinnati, Ohio: Bed Bug Heat Treatment burned down a home. AND A HEAT TREATMENT COMPROMISES SAFETY AFTERWARD: IT MAKES HOMES LESS SAFE AFTER TREATMENTS ARE COMPLETED Bed Bug Heat Treatments Often Damage Sprinkler Systems – so the treatment increases fire risks even after the bed bug service is complete. According to the National Pest Management Association, Heat also compromises the future effectiveness of a sprinkler, which may result in property damage, or human injury or fatality. There also is potential liability if a PMP disables a fire suppression system without an appropriate license or, if while the treatment is being performed, a fire occurs while the system is disabled. The NPMA warns in its bed bug protection guides that 11.3.3.4.6. Potential heat damage to certain materials, including the risk of activating automatic fire suppression systems (sprinklers). Care should be taken to safeguard these materials and systems. (page 13) The treatment area may also become a fire hazard after treatment because the heat dries out the wood beams and furniture. Put simply – heat treatments are not worth the risk to your life, health, and home- or to that of your neighbors and firefighters. ​

German Roach Reproduction

The German cockroach reproduces faster than any other residential cockroach,[13] growing from egg to reproductive adult in approximately 50 – 60 days.[14] Once fertilized, a female German cockroach develops an ootheca in her abdomen. The abdomen swells as her eggs develop, until the translucent tip of the ootheca begins to protrude from the end of her abdomen, and by that time the eggs inside are fully sized. The ootheca, at first translucent, soon turns white and then within a few hours it turns pink, progressively darkening until, some 48 hours later, it attains the dark red-brown of the shell of a chestnut. The ootheca has a keel-like ridge along the line where the young emerge, and curls slightly towards that edge as it completes its maturation. A small percentage of the nymphs may hatch while the ootheca is still attached to the female, but the majority emerge some 24 hours after it has detached from the female's body. The newly hatched 3mm-long black nymphs then progress through six or seven instars before becoming sexually mature, but ecdysis is such a hazardous process that nearly half the nymphs die of natural causes before reaching adulthood. Molted skins and dead nymphs are soon eaten by living nymphs present at the time of molting.

Super Roach

We all know that the most sly and sneaky creepy crawler out there is the cockroach. This bug will eat our pizza or snickers bar if open and left out; it will even raid our pantries and refrigerators. Over a span of many years this bug has put up quite a resistance in the war against mankind. The roach is one of the most exterminated bugs by pest control professionals, but in the 1990’s in Florida, some of the exterminator’s tricks stop working. This was because the roaches developed a trick of their own; ditching their sweet tooth. One of the professional tactics used against cockroaches is baiting them with a sweet, sugary poison. In the 90’s when this bait stopped working, researchers started speculating about this seemingly invincible pest. How had the bug avoided the sweet scent and taste of the concoction? Researchers from Raleigh’s North Carolina State University, Ayako Wada-Katsumata, Jules Silverman, and Coby Schal looked into that very question. THE FINDINGS Using the common German cockroach, researchers studied the reason for this change in roach behavior. Roaches use taste hairs all over their bodies instead of taste buds to taste their food. Researchers focused on the taste hairs around their mouths and two types of nerve cells that transmit signals to the brain. One of these transmits the taste of bitterness, while the other transmits the taste of sweetness. When the brain received the sweet signal, the roaches were, of course, inclined to eat the substance, and when it received a signal of bitterness, the roaches laid off. The three researchers from North Carolina determined that glucose, which is the main ingredient used in most sugary products, stimulates the bitter receptor in the roach’s brain. Entomologist at Purdue University, Grzegorz Buczkowski, and Walter S. Leal, the head of the entomology department in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis who were not involved in the research, made some remarks on the findings. Buczkowski said, “We lose baits all the time.” He expanded by saying that the bug industry has to keep up with the evolution of these bugs in order to maintain the effectiveness of their products. New poisons are constantly developed, because cockroaches and other pests become resistant to the poison, just as bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. The findings now explain that it wasn’t an ineffective poison, or that the roaches developed immunity to it. The cockroaches simply changed their genetic make-up and lost the attraction to glucose. Now some roaches are passing off this gene and evolving into some sort of super roach. Walter S. Leal says, “Sometimes the science is beautiful but you don’t know whether there is going to be an application five years from now, 10 years from now or 100 years.” These results seem to be well on their way to helping the pest control industry and mankind in general to keep a leg up on the evolving cockroach. Call your San Antonio Pest Control Pro....