Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Welcome to another episode of Peskies Pest Control podcast here in Birmingham Alabama with Michael and Travis. We do this podcast as a community service for Birmingham, Hoover, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Helena, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Hey, so today we wanted to come to you and talk to you about a little kind of misunderstood strange looking insect that you may have seen inside or outside of your home. That’s known as the ear wig. Now the ear wig gets its name from some very old superstitions that originated over in Europe. And basically, people thought that these insects while a person was sleeping at night, you know, laying there in bed, that these insects would go into the ear canal, the person sleeping, and would basically burrow down as far as they could and lay eggs. Thankfully, that is nothing but a superstition. And thankfully, that is definitely not the case. So earwigs are about five eighths of an inch long. And you know, their bodies are about reddish brown in color. Typically, the adults are a little darker in color than the younger earwigs are. So the darker and colder they are, the further along they are in their development. So they’re typically found outdoors but they can make their way inside your home. So if you’ve ever looked under maybe a potted plant or a pile of leaves or you know a doormat, anywhere where there’s, you know, moisture being held, or there’s decaying vegetation, any of those things that may be where you’ll find the earwig. Now, earwigs typically don’t cause too much damage inside a person’s house other than being unsightly and strange looking. In you know, finding their way through a crack or crevice in into your home, they typically don’t cause any damage to people property inside your home or food. And typically they don’t even reproduce indoors, they usually were reproduced outdoors. So usually they don’t really cause too much of an issue inside. And contrary to popular belief, the pinches on the back of the earwigs body typically aren’t used to harm people really not even very often used to defend themselves only in extreme cases. And even if they were to pinch you, they really can’t grab you very, very hard because of their size. And so they they use their pinchers mostly to hold on to food and for their foraging. But they can be kind of a pest in the garden areas outside of your home. They may chew on leaves of different flowers or vegetables. And you know they can they can definitely do some damage to flowering plants or seedlings or things like that. So typically, like I said, if you’re seeing these insects inside of your home, there’s usually nothing to worry about, but some things that you can do to get rid of them. You can definitely keep the areas around your home around your garden area clean. Anywhere they can hide under you want to remove those items, you want to remove excessive plant debris or excessive leaf leaf piles. You know where you place your potted plants where you place your doormats around the outside of the house can also dictate as to whether or not you have them, then you can also remove excessive moisture. areas as areas with excessive moisture tend to attract earwigs more so than areas that don’t. So if you’ve got irrigation, make sure it’s working and draining properly for your yard so it’s not pulling or holding excessive amounts of moisture around your home. And then of course you can always seal up different cracks, crevices or other entry points like that. But if you’re still dealing with your wigs and they’re getting into your home, and you’re having other issues, feel free to give us a call at pesquisas pest control. We would definitely love to come out. We’d love to do a detailed inspection and we would love to take care of your problem. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
