A Battle with Brown Recluse Spiders!

A family in Missouri is at war with brown recluse spiders.  It's scary enough if you find one of these spiders around your home.  The Bockhorn family has found hundreds!  According to a report from Fox 4 News in Kansas City, Jessica Bockhorn and her children fled their home after she was bitten by a brown recluse spider.  Darren Bockhorn is still battling the creatures that have infested his home.  He says the home was empty for a year before his family moved in.  Apparently, these brown recluse spiders took advantage of this and made the home their own.



photo courtesy of the Public Health Image Library; www.cdc.gov

Brown recluse spiders are native to the United States in the Midwestern and Southeastern states.  They are also know as fiddle-back or violin spiders because of the violin shape marking on their back (see above).  The most common places to find a brown recluse is in woodpiles, sheds, closets, garages, and basements.  Inside encounters often occur in shoes, bed sheets of infrequently used beds, clothes left lying on the floor, and inside work gloves.  The spider is not aggressive, and bites typically occur when a brown recluse is trapped against the skin, such as when the person is putting on clothes the spider is inside of.

Of all the spiders that you may encounter in the United States, only a few are considered poisonous.  The Brown Recluse is one of them.  Most bites actually result in a mild lesion that heals on its own.  Bites may even go unnoticed initially because it is painless when it occurs.  Symptoms will typically develop within the two to eight hours following the bite.  Some symptoms include itching, nausea, vomiting, fever, and muscle/joint pain.  In some cases, the bite becomes necrotic, destroying soft tissue.  Although most of these lesions heal without complication, it can sometimes take months to heal and may leave a permanent scar.  In extreme cases, the bite can become systemic, resulting in organ damage and even death.  Those most susceptible to systemic reactions are children, elderly, and debilitatingly ill individuals.

To help prevent being bitten by a brown recluse spider:

• Perform routine, thorough house cleaning.  
• Reduce clutter in garages, basements, and attics.  
• Move all firewood, building material, and debris away from the foundation of the home.
• Clean behind outside home shutters.

If you have any reason to think you have been bitten by a brown recluse, seek medical attention.  If it is possible to catch the spider, take it with you to the doctor to aid in the diagnosis.

Our thoughts go out to the Bockhorn family and the nightmare they are in. 

Presidential Bugs!

Photo from pctonline.com

For the last fifteen years, the New Jersey Pest Management Association has found an entertaining way to highlight their association.  During their annual trade show at Rutgers University, a cockroach derby is held to predict the outcome of presidential and gubernatorial elections.  This year, two 2 1/2 inch long hissing Madagascar cockroaches were topped with paper figures of presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.  Then they were put in a three-foot long enclosed track to see who will win.  Although it's all in fun and used to get media coverage of their trade show, the association claims to have an 84% success rate.  This year's prediction winner:  Mitt Romney.  If you've never watched cockroaches race, check out the race at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICPx9sXsFk0&feature=youtu.be

Mid-Georgia's Gone High Tech!

Mid-Georgia Pest Control is excited to share our new QR Code with you.  QR (quick response) codes can be read by most smartphones and tablets, allowing you quick access to our website.  Check it out!

Georgia's State Butterfly!

My family recently enjoyed a picnic and fun afternoon at Stone Mountain Park.  As the kids played and watched the train go by, this butterfly caught my eye:

This is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Georgia's state butterfly.  It is also the state butterfly of Alabama, Delaware, and South Carolina and the state insect of Virginia.  The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is found throughout the Eastern United States and Canada.  You can see these beautiful creatures from spring to fall with the time varying by the part of the country you're in.  In the south, they are often seen from February to November, while in the north, they are only seen from May to September. 



Male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail; photo courtesy of Jeffrey Pippen

You can recognize Eastern Tiger Swallowtails from the four black "tiger stripes" found on each fore wing.  Males are yellow, but females can be yellow or black.  The black morph in females mimics the Pipevine Swallowtail, a poisonous species that predators have learned to stay away from.  The outer edge of the Tiger Swallowtail's fore wing is black with a row of yellow spots.  The inner margin of the hind wing has small blue and red spots. Females have more blue on them than males.



Female Tiger Swallowtails; top-yellow female; bottom-dark female morph

It takes around one month for the life cycle to go from egg to adult.  Green eggs are laid on plants.  New caterpillars are brown and white, and look a lot like bird poop.  Older caterpillars are green with two black, yellow, and blue eye spots on the thorax.  These eye spots help to ward off predators.  The caterpillar will turn brown before pupating, and the chrysalis will vary from a whitish color to dark brown.  

Males often participate in a behavior called "puddling."  This is when they congregate on mud, damp gravel, or puddles.  Sodium ions and amino acids from these sources are extracted to aid in reproduction.



Puddle Party!

All photos other than the first one are being used by permission by Jeffrey Pippen of Duke University.  These are only a few of the beautiful photos on his website.  I encourage you to follow this link to check out the rest of his work: http://www.duke.edu/~jspippen/butterflies/easterntigerswallowtail.htm.

DIY Fruit Fly Control

fruit fly: photo courtesy of Andre' Karwath; wikipedia.org

How do you keep from being overrun with those itty bitty fruit flies lingering around your fruit bowl?  As with any bugs, cleanliness can go a long way to keep unwanted guest out of your house.  So, to prevent fruit flies in the first place, here's a few tips to help out:

• Use or discard all overripe fruit.  Leaving fruit left to rot is sending an invitation to fruit flies to breed in your home.
• If possible, clean your fruits and veggies at a makeshift cleaning station outside of your home.
• Cover your fruit bowl or store your fruits in the refrigerator.  
• Clean off opened bottles of fruit juice and fermented or vinegar products.
• Don't throw away food scraps in garbage cans inside your home.
• Wash all dishes after use.
• Wash dishrags regularly.
• Wipe up spills and crumbs from counter tops, cabinets, and floors as quickly as possible.
• Take your trash out daily.
• Keep those easy to forget areas around your dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator clean.
• Dump out mop water; clean the pail and mop.  

Fruit flies breed and live in warm, moist environments like garbage disposals and drains.  Keep these areas clean by using a hard bristle brush.  You can also pour a little household bleach down the drain to kill any fruit flies breeding there.

What if you already have fruit flies.  Here's some do-it-yourself suggestions that I came across.

• First, remove the source!  If you leave the rotting peach on the counter, these tricks are not going to work!

I found several methods of trapping them.  The lure is different, but the general idea is the same.  Put your bait (we'll talk about different kinds in a moment) in a jar.  Make a paper funnel and place it in the jar/bottle.  The flies will go in, but they can't figure out how to get back out!  After last Friday's post, I decided I would go home and try some of these tricks.  I got home to find that my children had accidentally started an experiment for me!  Someone had finished off the orange juice and left the "empty" container sitting on the counter all day.  Inside, floating in the small sips of leftover OJ, were two house flies.  The picture didn't turn out very well, but here are our two friends:

So, it looks like flies like the orange juice bait. Other suggested baits include:

• a piece of rotten fruit in a jar
• wine
• apple cider vinegar
• also, adding a small amount of dish washing detergent to a liquid bait helps to trap the flies

Since there wasn't much orange juice in our container, I decided to add a little white cooking wine and a squirt of dish detergent.  After topping it off with a funnel, the experiment continued to see how the fruit flies would respond.  We let it sit and watched it all weekend.  There were many times I'd walk by and see fruit flies crawling on the funnel, but I wasn't sure if they were finding their way in or not.

I decided to make another trap using apple cider vinegar.  By the end of the weekend there were only 2-3 fruit flies in that one.  For us, it wasn't very successful.  I did read that heating the cider vinegar releases more of the vinegar fragrance.  Maybe I'll try that next time.

However, I must say that the orange juice/white cooking wine combo worked quite well.  By the end of the weekend, this is what we had trapped:

We'd love to hear your experiences.  If you've tried any of these tricks or maybe even some not mentioned, let us know how they worked for you!

Pesky Fruit Flies

I love summertime, and one of my favorite things about summer is all the fresh fruits and vegetables.  We almost always have some kind of fruit around.  Unfortunately, that means there are sometimes fruit flies around, too.  You know, those itty bitty dots you see moving across a piece of fruit or flying around the kitchen.  I was making one of my boys a peanut butter and honey sandwich (his favorite) and noticed this on the jar of honey on the counter:

At the top you'll notice a normal house fly that made it's way in as well, but the two spots in the middle are fruit flies.  This morning, there were a few flying around our bananas as well.  Because of their very small size, my basic, non-sophisticated camera cannot focus on them very clearly.  They just look like the other spots appearing on the bananas.  However, look closely and you will be able to pick out some details: 

Look for the wings on the center spot

Find the little legs and red eyes on the middle banana

I love this one.  You can see the fruit fly on the side of the banana.  Look closely and you can see one on the napkin holder!

These pesky fruit flies can be a problem all year round, but they are very common during the late summer and fall seasons because of ripened and fermenting fruits and vegetables.  Although they are only about 1/8 in. long and seem to just be a nuisance, fruit flies breed bacteria and can become a health issue.  Since the life cycle of fruit flies is around 10 days, you can quickly find yourself overrun with an infestation. 

Check back next week for some tips to keep your home free of fruit flies and ways to get rid of them once you have them.