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Enjoy your July 4th Holiday but be careful out there! WATCH OUT for these disease-carrying pests and more!
In this issue…
1. Hantavirus
2.
Bark Beetles
3. Cockroaches
4.
Drywood Termites
5. Quick
Facts
Hantavirus, or HPS for short, is a deadly disease transmitted by infected rodents through urine, droppings, or saliva. Humans can contract the disease when they breathe in the airborne virus. Viruses become airborne when dried materials, contaminated by rodent excreta or saliva are disturbed.
The second fatality, due to Hantavirus, in New Mexico this year was just reported last week so this is a very real threat to everyone traveling in the infected areas.
People who do outdoor activities such as camping or hiking in areas where the disease has been reported should take precautions to reduce the likelihood of their exposure to potentially infectious materials.
· Avoid coming into contact with rodents and rodent burrows or disturbing dens.
· Air out, then disinfect with 10% bleach solution, cabins or shelters before using them. These places often shelter rodents.
· Do not pitch tents or place sleeping bags in areas in proximity to rodent droppings or burrows or near areas that may shelter rodents or provide food for them (e.g., garbage dumps or woodpiles).
· If possible, do not sleep on the bare ground. In shelters, use a cot with the sleeping surface at least 12 inches above the ground. Use tents with floors or a ground cloth if sleeping in the open air.
· Keep food in rodent-proof containers!
· Promptly bury (or--preferably--burn followed by burying, when in accordance with local requirements) all garbage and trash, or discard in covered trash containers.
· Use only bottled water or water that has been disinfected by filtration, boiling, chlorination, or iodination for drinking, cooking, washing dishes, and brushing teeth.
· And last but not least, do not play with or handle any rodents that show up at the camping or hiking site, even if they appear friendly.
Bark beetles are the most destructive insects in the conifers of the Southwest. Adult bark beetles bore through the outer bark to the inner layer, where they channel out galleries in which to lay eggs. Larvae hatch in these galleries and excavate additional channels as they feed. As bark beetles carve out galleries, they introduce blue-stain fungi. This fungus grows in the wood, interfering with the tree's water transport system. Tree deterioration and eventual death result from two factors:
Tree girdling caused by gallery excavation
Spread of blue-stain fungi.
Infested trees may be recognized at a distance by fading foliage high in the tree, initially a light green, changing to a light straw color in a few weeks, and eventually to yellowish-brown. Close inspection may show a fine reddish-brown boring dust in bark crevices and at the base of the tree. Small pitch tubes, or globs of pitch may be seen on the tree trunk. Cream to dark red pitch tubes, resin mixed with boring dust, ¼" to ½" in diameter, are an indication of a successful bark beetle attack. In some cases where the number of attacking bark beetles is not high, the tree may have sufficient resin available to eject the attacking bark beetles by seeping resin at the attack site ("pitching out"). Pitch tubes of whitish resin ¾" or more in diameter are evidence of an attack successfully resisted. Other evidence of bark beetle infestation includes galleries discovered under the bark, sapwood discolored by blue-stain fungi, woodpecker feeding holes and bark removal by woodpeckers.
To minimize the chance of bark beetle infestation keep trees growing rapidly and promptly remove damaged trees. Damage to trees by lightning, hail, wind, fire, construction or harvesting equipment, heavy pruning or other stresses, including drought conditions, causes them to emit odors that attract bark beetles. Remove heavily damaged trees promptly and treat salvageable ones to prevent establishment and development of beetle populations that could build up and attack other trees.
Seek professional help immediately to determine if a tree is salvageable or not and how best to proceed.
It's been a long, hot, dry spring and cockroaches are moving toward our yards and homes for shade and moisture. In our area there are a few species of cockroaches that are primarily outdoors cockroaches but come indoors for food and water. In and around homes they are most commonly found in cool, damp areas, particularly in garages.
Sometimes cockroaches are referred to as "water bugs" or "water beetles", perhaps as a way to make us feel better, suggesting that it really isn't cockroaches that we are dealing with. Common names are funny that way.
During the summer months they also can become quite common under dense, shaded ground cover in gardens, particularly in beds of ivy. Since they have a preference for high-moisture areas, they are also quite common in areas that are routinely watered, such as lawns and flower and vegetable gardens. When these gardens are around the base of the house, cockroaches will naturally gravitate into the house, especially in search of food.
Cockroach "control" begins with prevention. Obviously, if you can keep from having a problem to begin with it is far superior to having to eliminate it once it has become established.
There are three things a cockroach needs to survive. As a matter of fact, ALL living organisms need these same three things in some degree or another, and those three necessities are:
Food
Water
A place to hide, or "harborage"
If you are able to control, or completely eliminate, any one of these, you will not have cockroaches. The little pests are not about the overcome 350 million years of developing successful habits and instincts, and suddenly begin living without food, water, or a dark hiding place.
One of the most damaging organisms to the integrity and value of our homes is the termite. Just discovering that we have termites eating our house is enough to cause great anxiety in us, because it generally is a huge mystery to us as to just how these critters got there, and even a bigger problem in how we are going to get rid of them.
One kind of termite is the Drywood termite, so called because it does not have the need for moisture in the wood that the other kinds of termites do. These termites can live in extremely dry wood, and have no need to maintain contact with the soil, increasing the difficulty of controlling them.
Drywood termites fall into a happy medium in size, somewhere between the tiny subterranean termites and the huge dampwood termites. There also is a caste within the termite society called the "alate", or the sexually reproductive adult termites that have wings. They fly from the colony to start new termite colonies in new places. Like all other termites, once the "swarming" has taken place the alate loses the wings. They have no more use for them once they have begun a new colony inside the wood, so the wings are deposited outside so they won't be in the way. You may find these wings lying around on your back deck or in a windowsill.
Otherwise, if you happen to be remodeling and just tear open some wood - maybe a windowsill or a doorframe - you could, sadly, stumble upon a bunch of the small, soft, white workers moving up and down inside the hollowed-out galleries in the wood.
You might also find one more sign of the Drywood termites, and that is their fecal material. In fact, this is usually what professional termite control inspectors look for when they are inspecting a home, because the Drywood termites regularly push all this junk out of their colonies.
Keeping Drywood termites out can be difficult. Since these termites usually begin their colonies in the wood by flying to the structure, you have a very tough time keeping them from arriving. However, in recent years there have been some advances in preventing infestation by Drywood termites, and this is by spraying as complete a layer of chemical on the unfinished wood as you can.
Eliminating Drywood Termites really is a job best left to licensed professional pest control companies. The tools and chemicals needed are generally unavailable to homeowners. In general, there are two options for ridding your home of Drywood Termites:
"Local" treatment of just the wood you know is infested
"Whole house" treatment of the entire structure
If you are absolutely convinced that the Drywood Termite invasion you have discovered is limited to just a small area or single section of wood, then treating just that area with chemicals is an option. However, since the Drywood termites often have relatively small colonies, and there may be many colonies in a single structure, you just may not be aware of the other hidden infestations yet.