Owner of Precision Pest Control speaks to Kiwanis Club
EL DORADO — Owner of Precision Pest Control, Richard Pennington, answered questions the El Dorado Kiwanis Club members had pertaining to pest control on Wednesday.
Pennington has been in the pest control industry since 1997. In 2006, he started his own company, Precision Pest Control, and covers commercial and residential houses from El Dorado to Hot Springs.
He has an environmental science degree and has lived in Union County all of his life. He and his wife have adopted two baby boys and are planning to raise them in Union County.
Pennington is also working on getting his Louisiana pest control license.
Spring is “swarm season” and it is very important to get your house or business checked for insects such as termites, bees, fleas, etc.
“What we do is we treat crack and crevasses inside (your home or business),” Pennington said. “We also put out about 15 gallons outside to prevent any insects from coming in.”
Pennington services his commercial accounts once a month and checks on his residential accounts quarterly, or every three months.
“What we’re looking for is live insects inside your house while we’re there,” he said. “Our Delta Dust that we put out has about a 10-month residual.”
The outside chemical that the company uses lasts about 90 days, he said. The chemical has a broad range of insects, from bees, roaches, crickets, spiders, ants and more.
Pennington brought pictures of insects that are common in El Dorado to the Kiwanis Club meeting. These insects include bed bugs, the American roach, German roach, Oriental roach and Smokey Brown roach.
Pennington said that bed bugs are often found underneath the seam of a mattress or in a wooden headboard.
He also advises that when you go to a hotel, make sure to check the mattress for bed bugs before settling in. “If you see any black stains or any kind of markings on that mattress, take yourself to another hotel,” he said.
The American roach, Smokey Brown roach and Oriental roach are the ones you will find outside that are coming inside your house, he said. They are constantly licking their feet to use as suctions to climb on walls. They will digest the chemical from the walls from licking their feet and you will see them on their backs, he said. “They can actually stay on their back kicking for around three days if they don’t get a real lethal dose of it,” Pennington said.
The German Roach can only survive where people are living. They will eat the glue off wall paper and even off of your toothbrush or toothpaste, he said. They are most commonly found in the kitchen area and use the refrigerator as an incubator. The only way to get rid of these roaches is by baiting them with something to eat. “If you have them, you can pull your refrigerator away from the wall, and you’ll have thousands of them behind it,” Pennington said.
Pennington also discussed other animals common to Union County.
For moles, there is a product called Mole Scram you can sprinkle on your lawn that will cause them to move to another yard. Pennington is not allowed to apply this type of product because it requires him to have an ornamental license. He says he can recommend it and order it, he just can’t apply it.
Fire ants forge constantly, he said. Underneath one mound can have a 10 ft. circumference. He recommends a bait called Extinguish. It runs around $60 for two pounds. “I treated a yard which was about an acre that had 63 mounds on it,” he said. “I came back a month later and we had seven.”
It is also termite season. Pennington suggests cleaning out the gutters on your house because they can accumulate in the moisture gutters provide.
He also suggests bathing your dog regularly and changing out their bedding twice during the winter to keep fleas away. The winter has not affected the fleas. “We’ve had flea calls through December,” he said.
Moth ball crystals should keep away snakes and lizards. “Any hole on your house where your pipes come in, you need to seal it up,” Pennington said. “I’ve had one case where a snake crawled through three acres of field line and came out in the bathtub,” he said. “He was paper thin, but was about 5 ft. long.”
Lizards hibernate in the attic and come out when it begins to warm up.
A lot of people don’t know the difference between the Asian beetle and ladybugs. Asian beetles are orange and black. “They bunch up in a ball during the winter and come out during spring,” Pennington said.
The last insects that he spoke about were wasps and hornets. They both tend to have nests around the corners of your house. Using a type of drying agent should take care of your wasp problem, he said.
Hornets can build their colonies underground and he said it’s best to take care of them when it’s cold outside. “You’re going to probably be looking at well over 300 hornets,” Pennington said about underground nests. “That just depends on how old that colony is.”
You can reach Precision Pest Control at (870) 8624489.
“If you have a problem, you just call me and I come out and handle it for you,” Pennington said.