With a new school year gearing up, Florida parents, students, and teachers have a lot on their plates. With so much going on, you probably don’t want to add pest issues to your agenda – such as fruit flies, ants, lice, and ticks. Where are these pests most likely to show up and how do you prevent marauding bands of pests traipsing through your Florida home and schools?
Fruit flies
These tiny flies get into homes and schools through doors opening and closing often throughout the day but most fruit flies come inside in, or on fruit. Your apple a day may be keeping a persistent fruit fly issue going strong. Seeming to materialize out of thin air, the reality is that when fruit flies eat rotting fruit in your home or at school, they lay eggs in the fruit, as well. The eggs hatch and fruit flies looking for fruit juice left on dirty mops and in dirty drains can be a problem. How do you get rid of fruit flies?
- One home remedy suggests leaving a small amount of beer in the bottom of a glass and constructing a paper funnel coming out of the top. Fruit flies are drawn into the glass by the beer but cannot get back out.
- Another DIY solution involves pouring apple cider vinegar in the bottom of a jar, adding just a few drops of dish soap, covering the jar lid with plastic wrap and poking some holes in the covering. The dish soap breaks the surface tension of the vinegar, so when fruit flies land in the vinegar, they sink.
Keeping fruit in the fridge or covering fruit, such as bananas and whole melons, will help prevent fruit flies from entering your home or school.
Ants
It seems like it’s always ant season in Florida. The good news is that most area ants pose no health threats to humans or pets, with the exception of fire ants who tend to build their mounds away from structures. On that note, homeowners and school groundskeepers should keep a sharp eye for signs of fire ant activity to avoid contact with these ants whose venom, Solenopsis, is powerful enough to cause a serious allergic reaction.
About those other nuisance ants that can drive you crazy, including crazy ants, Argentine ants, ghost ants and others – in the hectic atmosphere of school starting back, things could get a little sloppy in the cleanup department, and voila, there they are trailing across your kitchen floor after one morsel of cereal under the kitchen table. At home, take care to:
- Clean up sticky spills, snack crumbs, and any food leftovers.
- Place a rubber band around lids of containers such as cookie jars and sugar containers.
- Wipe down counters and sweep/vacuum floors after snacks and meals.
Because some species of ants live in networks of nests near your home or school, the only effective way to eliminate these populations is by contacting a professional pest control company.
Lice
The bane of parents and school administrators everywhere, head lice show up on 6 to 12 million US preschool and elementary school kids’ heads annually. Spread by head-to-head contact, the head lice creepy crawly factor is right up there with bed bugs. Much easier to treat than bed bugs, head lice lay eggs on the hair strands of children near the scalp. These eggs, called nits, hatch and feed on your child’s scalp. While posing no serious health threat, kids can develop secondary infections from scratching head lice bites. The scariest thing about head lice is that these tiny bugs move fast from one person to another and can infect whole families and communities if not treated ASAP. Treatments include various shampoos and products that kill lice eggs, in addition to:
- Checking everyone in close contact with the infected person.
- Washing all hats, headbands, scarves, clothing, and bedding used or worn by an infected child and drying on high heat.
- Dry cleaning all non-washable items or sealing them in plastic bags for two weeks.
- Vacuuming floors that might contain hairs with live nits on them.
Ticks
While ticks do transmit many diseases, such as ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other spotted fever illnesses, you can take precautions to keep them off your school kids, including making sure they wear bug repellent when outdoors, in addition to:
- Wearing long-sleeved shirts, long pants, and closed-toe shoes when hiking in tall grass or wooded areas.
- Staying on designated paths.
- Vigilantly checking for ticks after walks and hikes.
- Ensuring your pets are protected from ticks with spot or ingestible treatments.
Prevention is always the best way to avoid dealing with household pests. At Hulett, our Healthy Home approach offers many programs to pest-proof your home or business. Locally owned and operated, Hulett’s environmentally responsible Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach safeguards your home from pest invasions. Schedule a free pest inspection today! Just call Hulett!
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