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Come in If you have an old house re:pest control
I am pretty much dry heaving as I type this. My dream house is turning into a nightmare.
#1 cockroaches. Omg! The exterminator says they are oriental which is great (does not sound great to me) an he said they are really common in our neighborhood b of the trees and nearby stream. They live behind wood paneling and crawl spaces (thank you old a$$ wood paneled addition w crawl space under it. He can spray at the beginning of April but I need to kill them til then because "it doesn't make sense to hunt a hibernating bear". These popped up a month ago.
#2 ants. These little buddies popped up yesterday and took over our family room? And kitchen in a heartbeat. I have bait traps out whih seem to be working and dh and I are annihilating them as we see them.
#3 ladybugs. These have been around since we moved in in Niv and are just slightly annoying.
My question. I haven't seen a roach in awhile but since I have ants and ladybugs should I call the exterminator and get them all in a clean sweep? Are exterminators effective against ants? I can't tell where they are coming from! How will this affect my familys health ESP my kids? Should I take them away for a week?
Eta: are the ants just over zealous bc of spring? Will they slow down as it gets warmer?
Thank you! As you can tell from my hardwoods post I've been spending more time han usual in my bedroom 
***Nestie Bestie w/ TheDeatons***
Re: Come in If you have an old house re:pest control
I've only dealt with ants and ladybugs in our current house but we had roaches in one of our NYC apts (very old building).
Roaches - the exterminator needs to do two things - treat for the current infestation (and the best bug killing stuff is not child/pet friendly) and stuff up any points of entrance with this wirey stuff that prevent them from getting back into the house. IME, that stuff only lasts 6 months. But once you know all the places to stuff you can replace the wire stuff yourself.
Ants - I use traps and wait for them to work. Sorry, no better advice.
Lady Bugs - we haven't been overrun with them yet (we were overrun by black flies last year which was foul!) but I just saw this natural lady bug trap that attaches to a window (very discrete) and claims to work for 2-4 years. Of course I just ditched that catalogue but I'm sure if you google you'll find it.
ETA: the wirey stuff is steel wool. Not sure why I blanked on that earlier.
***Nestie Bestie w/ TheDeatons***
I think it is just the time of year for ants. There have been several letters to the gardening guy in our paper re: ants and how to keep them out of the house. We put down borax powder around the foundation and entrances, and our problem stopped last week (not sure if it was because of the borax or not). The guy in the paper suggests tracking the ant trail and caulking up anywhere they might be getting in. I have a green clean book at home with ant remedies I can look at when I get home tonight. I recognize at least one of them (borax with sugar mixuture) here if you want to try something non-toxic yourself in the short-term.
No advice on the cockroaches or lady bugs. If you had an old-house rat/mouse problem, I'd be full of advice!
This! And I do have borax on hand from my cloth diapering days so I'll make an educated guess. Maybe rats and mice will be next
***Nestie Bestie w/ TheDeatons***
You know how ants walk in a line or a little "trail"? I think the guy in the paper meant follow the line of ants back to where they come in. But your questions make me think I must have worded this very poorly, haha. I don't think he meant you have to be some awesome hunter/tracker (picturing myself looking for clues to track ants, haha). If you're just finding random ants, I'm not sure his suggested method would work.
Rats and mice: You have to seal up every.single.hole on your home. Mice can come in through a hole the diameter of a pencil. Rats require a slightly larger hole. We had a horrible problem in my neighborhood when they tore down and rebuilt a derelict city building near us, so we hired a professional rat-proofer to come out and do the filling on our foundation. He came with a one-year warranty and was the best $500 ever. He sealed everything up with Great stuff, wire mesh, and wood boards and then used snap traps to catch everything in the basement. He had a mirror on a stick to look under things for holes. Check especially around where plumbing/wiring enters the house, near where the foundation hits the house and other joints. The rats chewed through a bit of his work around some pipes, and he returned and fixed it again with no further damage. After he did that, I stuffed steel wool into any hole that connected the finished floors to the basement, just in case they got in the basement again. We had great success trapping things ourselves before he came out with the battery-powered traps from HD (re-useable traps powered by C or D batteries, $40/trap for rats and $20/trap for mice, so a bit pricey). Neither of us has the stomach for snap traps.
Since we did all that a few years ago, we haven't seen a sign of anything in the house. They've broken into my garden shed a couple of times, for shelter I guess, but that's it.
Poison is a bad idea. They can die in your walls and stink and it can harm predator birds or pets that eat the dead rat. Not to mention the danger of pets or children eating the poison directly.
Things rodents love: PET FOOD (this is the worst, you have to have air-tight containers for pet food/wild bird food), bird feeders (I had to stop using them because the rats/mice just feasted on them and multiplied like crazy), crumbs in places like your toaster/around the trash. In our old apartment (a total slum) we had a mouse that had a field day on things like gum in our junk drawer. Basically, the more you can keep smelly/foody things completely sealed up and away from the outside of the house, the less attractive you will be to them.
We have a +100yr old farm house and the only problem we have with any sort of infestation is bats. We started remodeling and woke up the bats in the attic. We have killed 6 so far and saw 2 more flying around outside the other night. Once we put up the new soffit the problem will be solved.
Sorry I couldn't be more help. I know when we used to have lady bugs my mom would roll up a piece of duct tape into a circle and stick the ladybugs to it. Was pretty funny to see this roll of duct filled with ladybugs.
***Nestie Bestie w/ TheDeatons***
I always attempt pest control myself rather than hiring someone (exception: termites) because I'm not crazy about the idea of pesticides all over my house. If you're up for trying some green DIY before calling in the big guns, here's the (abridged) advice from my Green Clean book:
Ants: Ants hate cinnamon and cayenne, sprinkle it on their suspected entries to repel them. Or mix with some dishwashing liquid to make a paste and spread it on entries. For nontoxic traps, mix 1 c. borax, 1 c. sugar, 3 c. water. Soak a wad of TP in the mixture and put it in a tiny jar (baby food e.g.) and pierce the lid a few times. Place in the problem area.
Cockroaches: Cockroaches love water, so check for leaks. Sprinkle a mixture of sugar and borax near their trail, it will kill them if they eat it. Epsom salts will irritate and repel them. Pesticide-free trap info at www.pestproducts.com. However, some stubbon infestations will require baits like Combat traps (which it suggests in place of spraying pesticides).
I have read various things about borax being harmful if ingested and being careful not to leave it on skin or get it in your eyes, so if you have kids or pets that might get into it, I guess that's not good either.
I forgot to mention the guy in the paper was dealing with ants coming in to go after pet food bowls. He said they sell special dishes that have moats to protect the pet food from ants. I'm not sure it would keep them from coming in to investigate, but if a scout can't get to the food, at least he wouldn't lead in a bunch of others. Not sure if you have pets or not, so that may not be a problem.
We have the exterior perimeter of our house sprayed every other month and thus far that has kept everything out. When we put grass in the back we got a few crawlies in and they came back and sprayed again for free. Maybe that's a Cali thing since we don't have weather to deal with??
Its safe for the dog 2 hrs after they spray.
***Nestie Bestie w/ TheDeatons***