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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, Alabaster, Pelham and all other surrounding areas!
Michael Wienecke:
So we’re in pretty much the hottest part of the summer right now and getting tons of rain. Rain today. I feel like it’s going to rain tomorrow. I think all week next week it’s going to rain. And what brings on a lot of high moisture content inside a home is silverfish. We’ve been seeing a little bit of an uptick in silverfish. Travis elaborate more on silverfish. Where we see them, the issues that we kind of have with them. Customers obviously don’t like them and why.
Travis McGowin:
So I like what you said about the moisture content because typically that is one of the main attractants for silverfish. So silverfish are these little, I mean for lack of a better way to say it, ugly silver little tiny insects that are primarily nocturnal. They only like to travel around at night so most of the time you won’t see them in the daytime unless you move something that they’re taking shelter under or hiding under. You know usually you won’t see them. But they get their name and it’s two part. Obviously because they’re silver which is point number one. And then the other is because they kind of have the shape and movement very similar to what you would see a fish in the water do. So they have been appropriately named silverfish. Which is creepy. Yeah and they are. And they are kind of creepy looking too. Relatively harmless though in terms of humans. However they actually can cause damage. You know they like to feed on starches. They like to feed on things like that so they can you know damage books. They can damage wallpaper. They can actually be detrimental inside your house. So you know just for that reason they are actually considered a nuisance inside the house pest.
Michael Wienecke:
Yeah and a great indicator for you know if you start to have a silverfish issue is typically a leak. We see a bathroom maybe leaking up under the bathroom. The sink maybe you know leaking right there under the cabinet. And some kind of a moisture like I said high heat high humidity and pretty high moisture. I believe 75 to 95 percent moisture content. So it does take a lot of water but that’s where we start seeing a lot of influx of silverfish.
Travis McGowin:
Yeah and you know they also thankfully are not really known to transmit disease or anything like that. They can be sometimes responsible for food contamination that sort of thing. But like I said their biggest problem that people have with their house other than the fact that they just don’t like the way that they look would be just the damage you know damaging books photos clothing like I said earlier wallpaper carpet. Things that contain starches in adhesives and that sort of thing is kind of the thing that they like to feed on. So but I do like what you said about the about the possibility of a leak or a high moisture presence that can definitely be an attractant to them. And you know definitely throw up some red flags if you start to see a bunch of silverfish inside your home.
Michael Wienecke:
Oh yeah I mean we had a customer one time that she kept having them kept having them. We treat we get rid of them for a couple weeks to a month and then she’d have them again. So that immediately told us that there was an issue outside of our program and our treatment. So we started we brought in a moisture meter. We ended up finding a high leak in the wall and it turned out her whole entire bathtub was rotted out from the bottom. So kind of found a repair just doing pest control.
Travis McGowin:
It’s definitely not fun to give people that sort of you know bad news. But on the flip side of that it is nice to be informed and nice to know before you know problems get worse and that sort of thing too. And silverfish can actually you know live a very very long time and have multiple cycles of reproduction. And so given an undisturbed or unfound problem you know they can definitely balloon into a very big issue if given enough time and if they remain unseen and the problem goes out long enough that you just don’t find it.
