Spiders

Spiders can be found in California throughout the year, but they are spotlighted at Halloween for a few reasons. Not only are some spiders venomous, but they also tend to build webs in dark and vacant spaces, like scary abandoned houses. Spiders tend to move indoors during the colder months to protect their webs and babies from frigid winter winds. Fortunately, our Halloween pest control experts in San Diego can help you scare these creep-crawlies away with ease.

Cockroaches

Like spiders, different types of insects are often used in Halloween decorations. The cockroach is a prime example. Online, you’ll find tons of ads for bags of plastic cockroaches to use as creepy Halloween decor. You’ll even find recipes for Halloween treats that look like the pest. Cockroaches have probably won this Halloween honor because of their association with the dead. Their deadly image comes primarily from their connection to disease and unsanitary conditions (although they can live anywhere). It’s also perpetuated by the death’s head cockroach, a specific breed of roach with an eerie skull-like marking on its head. There are several types of cockroaches in Southern California. If real cockroaches are invading your home instead of fake ones, make sure to give Lloyd a call for a little Halloween pest control treatment!

Rats

Rats are also linked to both Halloween and death. This dates back to the days of the plague. Mice and rats carried the deadly plague from house to house and town to town before pest control or modern medicine were available. A particularly violent outbreak known as the Black Death killed an estimated 75-100 million people in Europe and the Mediterranean, solidifying the rat’s historical association with death. Rats are still known to spread disease and destroy property today. So, while plastic rats are a necessary Halloween gag, no one wants real live rats in their house. Fortunately, rats in Southern California today can be easily and quickly eliminated with the help of our certified, Halloween pest control experts at Lloyd!

In fact, pest control in Southern California can keep your home free of spooky spiders, bugs, rats or mice throughout the entire year. Contact Lloyd Pest Control for all your pest control needs. Halloween or not, we are not afraid of your dark attic, musty basement or creepy closets. Get rid of scary Halloween pests before they get rid of you!

The post Halloween Pest Control: When Halloween Decor Becomes Reality first appeared on Lloyd Pest Control.

Some ants protect their nests with their heads

Aside from being able to carry objects 50 times their own body weight, ants display another behavior that is quite spectacular. head to protect its colony from unwanted guests.

Ants use to live alongside the dinosaurs over 130 million years ago. Fossilized evidence of ants and other insects have been found in lumps of amber, or plant resin.

Termites are less dirty than you might think

Termites, though they can be disastrous to your home, are actually a benefit to the environment. Termites are vital to earth’s decomposition of tough plant fibers. But that’s not what’s so cool about these pests.

Much of a termite’s life is spent cleaning other termites in the colony!

Bacteria and fungal infections can make quick work of termite colonies, which is why they spend such a great deal of time grooming each other to keep the colony clean. A termite’s antennae enable the termite to detect infections while they clean.

Bed bugs hide before you know they’ve bitten you

Over the past few years bed bugs have grown as a menace throughout Southern California and the entire country.

Bed bugs inject anti-coagulants and anesthetics into your skin so they can feed and hide before you even know they are around. The bed bug’s saliva acts as an anesthetic thus masking the bite and increasing the speed of the feeding process.

Spiders limbs work like that of a machine

While it’s true that almost every spider in the world is venomous, most spiders teeth are either too small or lack the potency of venom to harm people. But it’s not just the fangs and the venom that scare people. Spiders have a strange way of moving, which, as it turns out isn’t that different, mechanically speaking, than the more familiar movement of a common construction site excavator.

Spiders can control blood pressure in their limbs using a combination of hemolymph (arthropod blood) and extensor muscles located in the three hip joints, which allows them to move, and even jump in the case of jumping spiders.

Bees will create a new queen from existing larvae

Often, the only silver lining to a bee sting is the assumed knowledge that after a single sting, the bee dies.  The truth, however, is that honeybees don’t always die after stinging something. A bee stinger may become caught in a human’s skin but many other surfaces anima skins are more forgiving and will endure multiple stings without harm to the bee itself.

But despite all this seemingly violent behavior, bees are extraordinarily community driven. As a queen bee dies, she emits a pheromone that will cause worker bees to immediately create a new queen from existing larvae.

Fleas and brushes have something in common

Your dog or cat may disagree, but the flea is quite a magnificent creature. Not only can a flea jump 8-10 inches vertically (making it one of the best jumpers of any animal, relative to body size), and not only can the flea’s hard body withstand incredible pressure, but the common flea is in some ways similar to the common hair.

 The flea’s body is covered with hard plates called Sclerites. In the same why that a hair brush is designed to easily part the hair on your head, the flea’s hard body plates (called Sclerites) have hairs that point away from its head allowing it to easily crawl through your dog or cat’s fur.

Cockroaches just want to be loved…sort of

You may know that cockroaches can live for weeks without their heads, but did you know that they like to be touched? Cockroaches are thigmotropic, which means they like solid objects coming in contact with their bodies.

Despite how interesting these pests may be, they can be damaging to our home and health. That’s where Lloyd Pest Control comes in. Our elimination service covers Southern California with more than 200 radio-dispatched trucks, 200 licensed technicians, supervisors, a Quality Control staff, an entomologist, and a biologist. For more information about each of these pests and their eradication, contact Lloyd Pest Control today at 1.800.223.2847.

The post 7 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Pests first appeared on Lloyd Pest Control.

It turns out that the cockroach’s ability to keep upright has nothing to do with the neural makeup of their brains, as it does in most other creatures, but rather relies on the physical architecture of their legs! That’s right; it’s the shape of the cockroach leg that allows it to keep the cockroach upright. Furthermore, a cockroach can navigate throughout its surroundings WITHOUT THINKING.

I don’t know about you, but this knowledge makes them even creepier.

As ABC Science points out, this knowledge goes beyond simply making our nightmares more nightmarish. The understanding of cockroach mobility might help robotics engineers develop more efficient robots: “one of the recurring challenges of designing a mobile robot is writing an algorithm that keeps it from falling over.” By bypassing the need for a robot “brain” and this complex balance algorithm, building a feasible self-reliant robot may become reality….wait, I’ve seen this movie. STOP THE ROBOT PROGRAM!

ABS Science also mentions the potential for this knowledge to help humans, too. Human mobility – how we walk upright – is still a bit of a mystery. Despite how easy our two-legged motion is, the neural processes that allow us that motion are quite complex. Understanding how the architecture of a leg on a cockroach may potentially help us to develop more reliable prosthetics and perhaps better therapies for people with brain injuries. So, I guess, CONTINUE THE ROBOT PROGRAM!

The post Did You Know: Cockroaches Don’t Use Their Brains to Keep Balance? first appeared on Lloyd Pest Control.

This worm and dirt cake is a fun way to get kids squirming and dying to try it at the same time. It’s even a fun dish to make for an office potluck! You can use any kitchenware dish but we think using a flowerpot or sand/beach bucket makes for more squeals and interest! This is an easy no-bake recipe that you can even make with your kids.

Ingredients:

15-20 Oreo cookies
1 (8 oz.) package of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
3 cups milk
1 (12 oz.) tub of whipped topping
2 (3 1/2 oz.) packages of instant chocolate pudding
1/2 tsp. vanilla
8-10 gummy worms

Directions:

Using a sealable plastic bag, the Oreos into small pieces. Put about one third of the crushed Oreos into a new, clean flowerpot and set aside.

Mix butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla together. Make sure you are working with softened butter and cream cheese so it won’t get clumpy. Do not use the microwave to soften the butter and cream cheese. Simply let it naturally come to room temperature. Set this mixture aside.

Combine milk and pudding mix according to the directions on the package. Then, fold Cool Whip into the pudding.

Next, fold the pudding mixture into the butter/cream cheese mixture.

Layer one half of the pudding/butter/cream cheese mixture onto the crumbled cookies in the pot. Next, add another layer of the crumbled cookies, then the last half of the pudding/butter/cream cheese mixture, and the final crumbled cookies.

Place the gummy worms emerging from the “soil” and laying on top of the “soil.”

Chill in refrigerator for 3 to 4 hours before serving.

The post How to Make a Worm and Dirt Cake first appeared on Lloyd Pest Control.

1)       Bake three round 9″ cakes.  Chocolate is best.  But you probably already know that.  Maybe you prefer lemon, but that would be wrong here.  Cherry?  You are twisted.  Please send us a photograph of your finished product.
2)      Assemble the three cakes end-to-end in a straight line.  Regardless of your cake flavor, chocolate frosting is required.  We used dark chocolate frosting because we are very  health-minded and have heard that dark chocolate has antioxidants.  Seriously.  It’s true.  We read it on the internet.  As we were eating dark chocolate.  Trying to find out what “˜antioxidant’ means.

3)      Line up six sticks of thick black licorice.  We use Red Vines black licorice.  I know… we just blew your mind.  Red Vines are red.  But they also make black ones.  Use the black ones.  Do not use Twizzlers, because Twizzlers are terrible.
4)      Using a really tiny band saw (or a butter knife), cut half-way through the middle of each licorice stick.  This is so that you can bend the legs away from the cut, so that they appear segmented.  What?  Did you really think we would make a morphologically errant ant cake?  We are professionals here.

5)      Frost the licorice sticks.  It’s a little tough, but the darkness of the licorice is forgiving.
6)      Take your chocolate-frosted Red Vine black licorice sticks and stab them into the middle round cake as indicated in the illustration.

7)      Use thin black licorice whips as antennae (Don’t frost them.  It ruins the reception.)
8)      MOST IMPORTANT:  Serve the ant cake on a red and white checkered vinyl tablecloth.  This is for authenticity, and to make the cake taste better.  Children find it delightful.  Grandmothers find it disconcerting.

That’s it.  The whole ant-chilada.  You are now an ant cake queen.  Please send us pics of your cake being enjoyed.  And send us ideas for other bug-related food stuffs.

Bon ant-etit!

The post How to Make an Ant Cake first appeared on Lloyd Pest Control.