Pest Control in Getchell, WA

Pest control in Getchell and the eastern hill neighborhoods of Marysville looks nothing like the downtown calls. These are newer subdivisions cut into second-growth timber, and the pest problems come from the boundary between the two rather than from the age of the houses.

The defining issue is carpenter ants. When a lot is cleared, the stumps and root balls of the alder, cedar and big-leaf maple stay in the ground. Those decaying stumps hold moisture perfectly, which is exactly what a western carpenter ant parent colony requires, and the new house goes up within seventy-five feet of one. A few seasons later the satellites move into a window header or a rim joist. Homeowners assume a new house cannot have an ant problem. It is the opposite.

Rodents come off the treeline. Deer mice from the field edges and the forest floor, roof rats down the cedar limbs that the builder left touching the roof, Norway rats out of the drainage swales and the blackberry that colonizes every disturbed edge within two years of construction.

Yellowjackets do well in newly disturbed ground, nesting in the loose soil of a young lawn and in the voids under fresh pavers. Bald-faced hornets build under the wide eaves of new construction. Spiders show up in September, drawn to the exterior lighting that every new house has more of than the old ones did.

The single best thing an owner in Getchell or Cedarcrest can do is get the stumps and the woodpiles away from the foundation and the limbs off the roof. After that, an inspection tells you what is already in the framing.

The calendar runs the same as the rest of the county, but the new-build detail changes the emphasis. February and March: carpenter ant swarmers indoors, which in a five-year-old house surprises people and should not. April and May: foraging climbs and the first ant trails appear. Yellowjacket queens found nests in the loose soil of young lawns.

Mid-August through September: those colonies peak at several thousand insects and switch to scavenging sugar. Bald-faced hornets hang their grey paper football under the wide eaves that new construction favours. First week of September: the spiders wander. Late September through November: the rodents come off the treeline and out of the swales.

The exclusion list for a new house is shorter than for an old one, which is good news, and it is almost never done, which is not. Hardware cloth on the crawl-space vents. Copper mesh and sealant where the gas line, the hose bibs and the cable enter. A sweep on the garage door. Screens on the gable and roof vents. Limbs cut back six feet from the roofline before they reach it.

And the stumps. If the builder left them, they are the parent colony. Getting them out, or at least getting the woodpiles and the bark mulch away from the foundation, is the single highest-value thing an owner up here can do.

Common calls in Getchell

These three come up most often here. Every service is available across the whole area, and if what you have is not on this list, describe it on the phone.