What’s the Deal With Earwig Removal in Sacramento, Anyway?
Earwigs are a little, well, what’s the right word. They’re not harbingers of disease or illness. They don’t actually hurt people in any way. With their wide-splaying, leathery-looking pincers, though, a lot of people think they’re just kind of creepy or weird.
While they won’t hurt you, they can do a lot of damage in gardens, both to foliage and fruit. Many gardeners are not particularly fond of earwigs for this reason. While earwigs are principally scavengers and feed on dead or dying matter, they will sometimes feed on healthy plants, leaves, and fruits and vegetables as well. Their populations can grow quite large quite quickly, and it’s for this reason primarily that residents of Sacramento desire earwig removal.
Myths and Facts About Earwigs
Earwigs do not burrow into humans’ ears, contrary to popular belief. They get their name from the ear-like shape of their pincers when they are fully open. As scavengers, earwigs clean up decaying organic matter. While some earwigs also eat living matter, and specifically new plant shoots, most eat matter that is composting or rotting. Residents of Sacramento can anticipate earwig removal, giving their plants new life!
Earwigs use their pincers to spar with enemies, for defensive measure, and, for males, for help with reproduction. Their pincers are too small and weak to cause any significant trauma to humans. Earwigs have been rarely known to crawl into people’s ears, but this appears opportunistic in nature and not common.
Make Your Home Unfit for Earwigs
Earwigs crave a very specific environment to make into their homes. They generally want to be in cool, dark/moist, damp areas. You won’t find earwigs in bright, sunny, dry spaces, such as a desert or at extreme altitude. This means that, insofar as homes go, earwigs have similar desires to humans. We need water to be available in our environment, and at times, we crave dark places. What this signals is the necessity of human-earwig peaceful coexistence.
That being said, you don’t have to make your home into a home for an earwig infestation either. Sacramento earwig removal is available for you at any time; feel free to call us today. Here are a few things you can do on your own to deter these bugs from taking up residence in your residence:
- Generally, ensure that most areas of your home are well-lit. Area or accent lighting can help achieve this, as well as outdoor lighting schematics such as garden lights or landscape lighting. Earwigs prefer a dark environment, so if you’re shining a light on them all the time, you can be sure they’ll scatter.
- Well-heated homes do not attract earwigs, either. They are most at home in cool or cold places, and they don’t like the heat. If your home is kept snug it is likely that earwigs will not look to it for a good place to make a home.
- Keep the moisture levels in and around your home as low as possible. Earwigs thrive in damp and moist areas, so make sure you’re always cleaning up all spills, attacking all seepage, and drying out all standing bodies of water around your home, both inside and out. Earwigs love moisture (this is why they like your garden so much) and are incredibly attracted to it. They will seek out even the smallest and seemingly thinnest sources of moisture in your home.
- Make sure you drain all cracks, crevices, ponds, buckets, leaks, drips, and other sources of moisture from your home. Ensure that there aren’t any trickles or traces left — especially since those can easily turn into floods and rivulets. Stanch all of the moisture from all of the areas in and outside of your home, and you can bet you won’t have any more problems with earwigs returning.
- Use sodium lights outside. These are the kind that are good for growing plants; they emit a more yellow hue and earwigs are not attracted to them.
Earwig Removal Services in Sacramento
If you find that the problem is too big for you to feel comfortable handling or that cleaning and drying out your home as much as you can isn’t helping to curb your earwig situation, there may be greater underlying problems. Please feel free to contact us here at Earthwise Pest Management, your earwig removal company in Sacramento, at any time for further assistance with earwig removal. We are here to help!