What are the Worst Pests to Exterminate?

by Aug 17, 2018Lifestyle, News

Australian domestic pests, pest extermination, pest control, pest control equipment

Ask anyone who lives in Sydney, and they’ll tell you that hands down the hardest residential pest to exterminate is cockroaches. Those little suckers can survive just about anything!

But in reality, it’s pretty difficult to pinpoint the worst pest to wage war against in your home. Mostly because we live in Australia and, well, there are just so many! When you consider how prevalent a species is, how difficult it is to get rid of, how much destruction it can cause and how dangerous it can be, we’re still left with a rather long list. We’ve endeavoured to provide a snapshot of this list by highlighting the most challenging pests to remove from people’s homes, considering these factors and our own experience.

Termites

It will come as no surprise to any Queenslander that termites are high up there when considering the worst pests to exterminate! Termites work swiftly to eat away at timber homes, and many people don’t notice the destruction they have caused until it’s too late. Their colonies can be massive, and it’s a tough job for pest controllers to ensure that they’ve managed to kill every last one present on your property. Proper extermination takes time and patience, too. If you go around banging heavily on walls trying to drive termites out, they will simply move further along your house and destroy more rooms from the inside out. It’s also likely that they’ll travel to neighbouring properties to seek shelter or more food. Keeping termites under control requires a skilled hand with plenty of experience!

Bed Bugs

Bed bugs are tiny, tiny critters that can travel a very long way! They attach themselves to people’s luggage, including their clothes and bedding, and enjoy infesting as many homes as possible. While bed bugs do not tend to do any lasting damage, they make this list because they’re incredibly difficult to get rid of and uncomfortable to live with. Chemical pesticides alone will not eradicate them. Steam treatments also need to be executed throughout the entire home to kill eggs. Often people need to throw out whole pieces of furniture, including couches or mattresses and start from scratch. Even an industrial vacuum won’t suck up all of these clingy critters!

Possums

While possums are relatively harmless creatures if left to their own devices, they certainly are LOUD! The sound of a possum running through your roof in the middle of the night is thunderous enough to make you think that the apocalypse is nigh. Possums are one of the worst house guests because they pee on basically everything and definitely do not adhere to the noise curfew. They cramp up your attic space with their smelly nests and become extremely territorial once they’ve staked their claim on an area. When a possum makes it home on your property, it’s your housemate for good. Because they’re a protected species, it’s against the law to kill them. Relocation needs to occur within 25 metres of the place in which they were found (your attic). So you better create a nice and cozy home for it in a nearby tree, and board up all entry points to your attic, because possums pretty much invented the phrase ‘overstaying one’s welcome.’

Pantry Moths

Not many people give much thought to the humble pantry moth until it’s bred and infested every carton of food in your home. Pantry moths are another of those small critters that often go undetected until you find them squirming around in your flour or weaselling their way into your plastic containers of grain. It takes just one of these blighters to get into your pantry, for you to have to chuck absolutely everything and clean the whole thing out with hot, soapy water. You’ll probably even find them in the unopened boxes and packets of cereal, biscuits and spices because they can chew through plastic and thin cardboard. And if you think securing all of your food in containers will prevent them from coming back, think again my friends! Your average Woolies plastic container won’t keep these guys out. They can squeeze their way into the smallest gaps. You’re going to have to splash out on the expensive, airtight stuff and put sticky pantry moth traps on basically every surface of your kitchen to ensure permanent eradication.

So there you have it. From the downright dangerous to the outright obnoxious, Australia’s pests can be bloody hard to give the flick.`But this is why we have a whole contingency of pest control specialists ready to take on those seemingly impossible jobs!

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