I guess there has been a pandemic of creepy proportions around Pleasantville recently.
The biggest pests as far as I’m concerned are the ones trying to sell pest services. In case you are wondering “pest services” differ from “pest control”. Pest services come out to your house once a month or once every other month and spray God only knows what chemicals all over kingdom come to kill off anything that creeps. Pest control deals with whatever you may have on hand. Pest services will cost you $500 a year (plus however much for the actual work) for mystery chemicals everywhere.
For starters people selling pest services door to door makes me suspicious - especially when the first words out of their mouth is “Oh I’m not selling door to door”.
I call Bullshit! Yes you are. You are walking up to me while I unload the Mommymobile and you are offering to check my house for pests. That is pretty much the definition of door to door sales. I don’t care if you “happen to be in the area to take care of a neighbors problem” or not. You are still trying to sell me a service that is a bigger pest than the pests I have.
We do have pests. I have a couple of wasps nests around the eaves of the house and on the deck. The nests on the deck are the size of a walnut or smaller and Mr.Fairy can take care of those. The bigger ones we will probably have to hire someone to come out and knock them down because they are getting pretty big and they are up higher than the Mr. and I can safely reach.
I don’t have any particular interest in KILLING the wasps. They’re paper wasps so they aren’t aggressive or even remotely interested in us. I have at least one window open near the nest and the back door is continually open in the summer without a single wasp in the house. They don’t bother anyone and they eat bugs. Big fat hairy deal.
In the three years we have lived in this house this is the first time we have needed someone to come out and tend to our pests.
The girl who was “not” trying to sell me her service could see that there are spider webs in my garage…since…well…she was standing in it since I was trying to unload the Mommymobile. And since I’m a chick she decided to go with the “Scary Spiders! Scary Spiders!” approach to salesmanship.
“Oooo! Brown Recluse! Hobo Spiders! Oooooo! Hiding in the corners of your garage!”
Barking up the wrong tree.
I am not a fan of spiders, but spiders and I have come to an understanding. If they are NOT the Giant House Spiders and they stay the hell out of the bedrooms, I will basically look the other way. The giants and anything wandering into bedrooms have to go though.
And since spiders, much like the paper wasps, eat other bugs I let them go about their business and do just that.
“You may have spiders in your crawl space!”.
What?! I assume I do. Have you ever seen a crawl space without spiders?
Look. My house is not hermetically sealed. That is just not the way I roll. There is a major difference between having creepy crawlies around and a real infestation.
As long as they pretty much leave me alone I will leave them alone and everyone will get along just fine.
Now, if someone has a spray service that will keep door to door salesman away from my doors I am all ears.
