Save "Under God" in the US Pledge - Home

Save "Under God" in the US Pledge - Home

Our 1st Video on Residential Annual Outside Service

Pennington Pest Services Certified Applicator, Steven Pennington, is performing a Residential Annual Outside Service, this is one of many services that we offer. Go to our website www.penningtonpestservices.com to see other offer and specials that we have going on right now. You can call 817-721-2844 (BUGG) to set your appointment today.
Thank you for viewing our video,
Sherry Pennington - Owner

Video Residential Annual Outside Service

"The Ant - Did You Know?"

• That their are more than 21,000 species of ants.  Ants can lift 20 time its own body weight. 

• Ants go though four stages of development - the egg, larva, pupa, and adult.

• Ants have three main parts - the head, the truck (middle section) and the rear or metasoma.  Many ants have poison sacks and/or stingers in the metasoma for defense against predators. 

• Ants have a pair of elbowed antennae (bent) on the head and constricted area between the thorax and abdomen called the petiole.  The petiole has either one or two nodes.

• The head of an Ant has a pair of large, scissor like strong jaws.  Adult ants can not chew and swallow solid food - Instead they swallow the juice that they squeeze from pieces of food - they trow away the dry part that's left over. 

• The ant has abdomen has two stomachs.  One holds the food for itself and the second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants.

•  They have six legs and each leg has three joints.

• Ants have two eyes, each eye have many smaller eyes, ants eyes are a lot like flies eyes, this is called compound eyes.

• Ants don't have ears - they "hear" by feeling vibrations on the ground and they use their antennae (feelers) for touch, to communicate, and sense of smell. 

• Ants don't have lungs - oxygen enters through tiny holes all over their body and carob dioxide leaves through the same holes. 

• Ants have no blood vessels, their heart is a long tube that pumps colorless blood from the head back to the rear and then back up to the head again.

• When ants search for food (foraging) ants leave a trail called pheromones so they know where they've been. 

• Ants are social insects.  They live in colonies.  Colonies consist of millions of ants.  The three kinds of ants in a colony are the Queen, the female workers, and the males.

• Ants build many different types of homes, they can build simple little mounds out of dirt or sand.  Other ants use small sticks mixed with dirt and sand to make the mound stronger.  Western Harvester ants make a small mound on top, but then tunnel up to 15 feet straight down to hibernate during winter.

• Ant mounds consist of many chambers connected by tunnels. Different chambers are used for nurseries, food storage, and resting places for the worker ants. Some ants live in wood like termites. Army ants don't make a home at all but travel in large groups searching for food.

• Some Queens can live for many of years and have millions of babies.  The Queen ants have wings they shed when they start a new nest.  When the Queen dies the colony can only survive a few months Queens are usually not replaced and the workers can't reproduce.

• Ants reproductive caste consists of both males and females. At certain seasons of the year ants produce many such reproductives. These include the "kings" and "queens" of future colonies. Unmated insects are called pre-reproductives and usually possess wings prior to leaving the colony. Pre-reproductives remain inside the nest for varying periods of times--sometimes for several months--waiting for the proper signals to leave the nest in search of new mates. When they emerge from the nest in large numbers they are said to swarm. The pre-reproductives are called swarmers at this time.

• Swarming is usually triggered by several environmental clues such as temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and day length. Carpenter Ants, Fire ants, Argentine ants, Pharaoh ants, for example, send out swarmers in the spring when the relative humidity is high and the wind speed is low. By using identical environmental cues to trigger swarming, ants increase the chances for their reproductives to encounter other swarmers of the same species.

• Swarming ants inside a house mean that there is an ant nest either inside, underneath or very close to the home. In most cases, if worker ants have not previously been a problem inside the home, the presence of swarming ants indoors should not be a cause for concern. Swarming typically lasts for only one day. This, and the fact that reproductive flights only occur once to a few times a year, means that a vacuum cleaner or one-time use of an indoor flying insect spray usually solves the problem.

• On the other hand, swarming ants may be evidence of an undesirable infestation. Pharaoh ants and carpenter ants are two ant species that can become chronic pests in a home or other structure. If a home has an infestation of either of these species, worker ants are most often continually present in the house.

• Swarming fire ants indoors usually indicate an outdoor nest adjacent to the building foundation. If fire ants swarm indoors, locate and treat the outdoor mound with a low-odor insecticide. Failure to treat fire ants next to your home may result in mass invasions of fire ant workers, especially during the hot summer months.

• Save any specimens you discover. The best way to preserve a specimen is to place it in a crush-proof container in alcohol (rubbing alcohol is fine), or put in a zip lock bag, or even tape the specimens to a white piece paper. Make a note of the date and which room it was collected from. This information will help when an inspection of your home. Many suspected termite infestations turn out, on close inspection, to be some other insect. If you find swarmers in your home give us a call and we can take a look and see what is going on.

• When ants fight - it's usually to the death.

 Make sure that you stop by our website to check out our "Spring Specials".www.penningtonpestservices.com

"The Love Bugs", the Insect not the Car...

Did you know that there is a insect call the "Love Bug"?   It lives around the Texas Coastline all the way to Florida.  
The lovebug, Plecia nearctica, is a member of the familymarch flies. It is also known as the honeymoon fly, telephonebug, kissybug or double-headedbug. The adult is a small, flying insect common to parts of Central America and the southeastern United States, especially along the Gulf Coast.
For most of the year, lovebugs are beneficial in that the larvae (maggots) live in grassy areas and feed on dead vegetation within the thatch. This results in not only the eventual release of nutrients back into the soil, but also decreases excessive thatch which can be detrimental to grass growth and serve as a protective cover for serious grass pests.

Want more information on Love Bugs?  Go to this Wikipedia Link.

Brown Recluse Spider vs. Hobo Spider

The brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa, is a well-known member of the family Sicariidae (formerly placed in a family "Loxoscelidae").
It is usually between 6–20 mm (¼ in and ¾ in), but may grow larger. It is brown and sometimes an almost deep yellow color and usually has markings on the dorsal side of its cephalothorax, with a black line coming from it that looks like a violin with the neck of the violin pointing to the rear of the spider, resulting in the nicknames fiddleback spider, brown fiddler or violin spider. Coloring varies from light tan to brown and the violin marking may not be visible. To read more on the Brown Recluse Spider of the Wikipedia Article.

The hobo spider (Tegenaria agrestis) is a member of the genus of spiders known colloquially as funnel web spiders. It is one of a small number of spiders in North America whose bites are generally considered to be medically significant. Individuals construct a funnel-shaped structure of silk sheeting and lie in wait at the small end of the funnel for prey insects to blunder onto their webs. Hobo spiders sometimes build their webs in or around human habitations. Although this species of spider has a reputation for aggressiveness, they will normally avoid contact with humans. Most bites occur when the spider is accidentally crushed or squeezed by a human. The spider's venom is strong enough to cause considerable local pain and there are reports that it may cause tissue death (necrosis) at and near the bite.
To read more on the Hobo Spider of the Wikipedia Article.


Hobo Spider Bite ~ 
My son who was 7 yrs. old at the time, got a spider bite at his school playground. This was very painful bite, he said it burned a lot, with lots of pain. Even though he was in a lot of pain he did not get to sick from this bite. When he showed me the bite, I called the doctor immediately to get him seen by the doctor. The doctor gave him medication to put on the bite. Now after 2 yrs he still has a scar from the bite, but in due time that will go away. I am very thankful that we got it treated in time before it got to bad and before he got very sick. Spider bites from a Brown Recluse, Hobo, or Black Widow are not to be taken likely, seek medical attention immediately for the fast and best treatment.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Panda-monium: Sixteen panda cubs pose for a class shot on their first day at nursery | Mail Online

Panda-monium: Sixteen panda cubs pose for a class shot on their first day at nursery | Mail Online

Signs of a Rodent Problems:

Rodents spread disease, damage structures and contaminate food and feed. Rodents damage one-fifth of the world's food crop each year.
The real damage is in contamination. One pair of rodents shed more than one million body hairs each year and a single rodent leaves 25,000 droppings in a year.
The Rodent is by far the largest mammalian order; nearly half of all mammal species are rodents.The approximately 4,000 rodent species are divided on the basis of their anatomy into three well-defined groups, or suborders, and more than 30 families.

Signs of a rodent problem is:
1. Fresh droppings are dark in color and soft in texture, but after three days they harden and lose the dark color.
2. Rodents always travel the same runways and leave "smudge marks" - a buildup of dirt and oil from their fur - along walls, pipes, gnawed openings and beams and rafters.
3. Rodents keep indoor runways, or well-used paths free of cobwebs, debris and dust. Outside, runways appear as narrow paths through vegetation. 4. Rodents make sounds when climbing, clawing and moving.
5. If dogs or cats unexplainable get excited, rats are probably moving about in wall voids or ceilings.
6. Damaged goods. Roof rats prefer fruits, vegetables, and cereal whereas, Norway rats prefer meat fish and cereal.

The key to any rat or rodent control program is pest identification, sanitation, elimination, and rat-proofing your home .

Why Rodent Control:
* World Health Organization estimates that about 33 million tons of food is destroyed world-wide each year.
* Rodents destroy property by their constant chewing.
* Rodents can put livestock at risk of death and disease.
* Rodents can carry diseases to humans such as rat bite fever, eptospirosis, salmonellosis, and plague to name a few.

To control rodents, you must "think like a rodent". The best way to control rodents is to prevent their entry. Rodents are able to squeeze through extremely small openings. Cracks in the foundation 1/4 inch and larger should be sealed, as should gaps and openings under doors and where utility pipes enter the structure.

Good sanitation and food storage practices are helpful in reducing problems. Since seeds are a preferred food, all adjacent to the building should likewise be eliminated. However, because rodents are able to occupy such small nesting areas and survive on minute amounts of food, sanitation alone will not normally eliminate an existing infestation.

And if your Rodent Problem is to much for you to handle give us a call or email and we will be more than happy to take care of this for you.

We have a Winter Special on Rodent Treatment going on right now, just click on this link to Coupons and Specials