Yellowjackets already were making headlines a month ago, even as we head into peak season for stinging insects in our Sacramento pest control region. The San Francisco Chronicle and other NorCal newspapers reported a July 3 yellowjacket attack on more than 70 attendees of the Alameda County Fair. Apparently, the ground-dwelling yellowjackets were disturbed by a fireworks display in the fairgrounds arena. None of the victims, who ranged in age from a 6-month-old infant to a person over age 60, exhibited allergic reactions or required hospitalization, although some received multiple stings. In the Seattle area, also over the July 4th weekend, at least five people were treated for anaphylac

Spiders, long a favored subject of sci-fi movies and horror novels, seem to provoke an especially strong yuck factor in humans. Although we know on an intellectual level that they have many beneficial purposes in the eco-system, including eating other insect pests, most of us don’t want them in our kids’ bedrooms. Now that warm weather has arrived, spiders are proliferating outdoors and often making their way into our homes. Of the more than 50,000 species of spiders, only a relatively few of them are able to bite humans, for the simple reason that most have mouth parts too small to break human skin. Only one type of California spider, the Black Widow, is considered to be a serious medic

They may be smaller and, some say, cuter, but in terms of pest control, mice are a more prevalent, more damaging and tougher problem than their two rodent cousins, rattus rattus (roof rats) and Rattus norvegicus (Norway rats). And as our Northern California winter grows colder and wetter, mice are more likely to set up housekeeping in our cozy homes and businesses. The mice we see most often in our Sacramento pest control business are the house mouse (Mus musculus). Two other types of mouse, the deer mouse and the white-footed mouse, also may invade human dwellings but are most often found in cabins and homes in remote or rural areas. The house mouse can be easily distinguished from deer