Ants, crickets, spiders. Worse yet, wasps, hornets and bed bugs.
Add then to flies and mosquitoes. They all come along with the joys of summer.
Kevin Coye, who works for Midwest Pest Control Service, arrived at my house in a truck with the license plate reading RODNT8R.
He made quick work of a hornet nest attached to steel siding on the roof near a window. To him, it was not such a big deal.
He drives 5,000 to 6,000 miles a month answering calls in the area. He has been chased by raccoons and skunks.
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Wasps are worst this time of year, according to MaryLou Wick of Midwest Pest Control. And there always are calls about carpenter ants.
"They're tricky," she said. "They find a way to chew into houses and lay eggs. The new ants want to get out through the same tiny tunnels."
She says mice go absolutely crazy trying to find a way inside in September and October.
"Two years ago," she said, "the mice absolutely went nuts. During a long, hot summer, they had two families."
And as for crickets, she notices they are busy now. The young are growing up. But they generally are not considered pests.
In fall, the mice start moving in. Dan Mayer of Dan's Pest Control gets lots of calls. In spring and fall, spiders are a problem in lake cabins as well as homes in towns.
The warmer it gets in July and August, he finds more requests coming in to help with yellow jackets.
"The hornets are getting into homes right now," he said.
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"Crickets will start moving in," he said. ''They are not much of a problem, except for homes on the edges or outside of towns.''
Cockroaches are around, too. They seem to arrive inside of suitcases or boxes. But Mayer says there are not as many as there used to be. That's because of better products to get rid of them.
The cold here helps keep cockroaches at bay here, according to the exterminators. They say northern people don't put up with them. Down south, they breed easily, and it's no big deal.
Bed bugs have been showing up all around here in the past few years, according to people who do pest control. They say they are definitely here.
"They are small and look like wood ticks," said Coye. "They are hitchhikers and get inside of luggage. And people travel a lot more,'' he said.
Like others in the exterminating business, Coye said, "We can get rid of them."
Exterminators say there has been an influx of bed bugs across this area in the past four or five years.
"Bed bugs, for sure," said Wick. "We have treatment with heat and chemical applications. We go in trailers with generators and heat up an infected space to 140 degrees for several hours.
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''It's not cheap,'' she said. ''But bedbugs can't handle that.''
Exterminators have better products now. Trying to exterminate the bedbugs with one can of Raid probably won't work, she said.
