LESLIE: Daniel in Virginia is calling in with an ant situation and not the relative kind; the insect kind. What can we do for you?
DANIEL: Well, first off, my house is about 10 years old. It’s a split foyer that sort of the basement part sort of dug into the hill. And what I’m having is during the spring, summer and fall – you know, going into a fall kind of time frame – we’re getting a lot of sugar ants inside; both in the kitchen and in the living room. And it seems like no matter what I do, they just keep coming back; as clean as we keep it – you know, I’ll spray outside; I’ll spray inside.
And I was wondering if there were any techniques or products or anything you guys might recommend to help me with this problem. The other sort of thing to factor into it is I do have two small children and two cats, so I’m sort of hesitant to put too much killer on the inside.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: (overlapping voices) Right. Right. And you know what? It’s a good point because a lot of the over-the-counter pest control products, people go nuts with those and they basically are putting a lot of toxic pesticides around the house.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) All around your house.
TOM: And that’s why sometimes, if it’s a persistent problem like that, you’re much better off going to a pest control professional because, first of all, they’re going to use the exact right product; there’s no guessing involved. They’re going to choose the right product, they’re going to put it down in the right places and they’re going to put it down in the right amounts.
And well, you might think, “Well, the over-the-counter-stuff could be safer,” not necessarily. When it’s done by an amateur, it could be very unsafe. Did you ever see a story – about once a year or so, I’ll read about a story where somebody bought a bug bomb and they thought, “Well, if one bug bomb is good, 10 are better,” (Leslie chuckles) and blew up their house in the process.
So, it can be very dangerous with this stuff. But if you’ve got a persistent problem that’s going on for a long time like that, I might turn it over to a pest control pro. There are great products out there; there are a lot of baiting products out there today that basically you put down; the ants pick it up and they take it back to their nest and they pass it from insect to insect and that wipes out the whole problem once and for all.
DANIEL: OK. (inaudible at 0:24:20).
TOM: (overlapping voices) Much safer than trying to see a bunch of ants and spray them and see another bunch of ants and spray them and so on and so forth.
DANIEL: Sure. OK, that makes perfect sense to me. I appreciate the help with that.
TOM: (overlapping voices) Alright. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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