Lice have a bit of an undeservedly bad reputation. There are actually over 3,000 species of lice, some of them very beneficial to humans and our environment, but we tend to think of these little creatures only in their most negative sense, as the wingless creatures tend to stir up quite a bit of heat whenever they appear. Let’s take a look at some of the problems that lice cause in their pestilential forms.

* Social ostracisation. Nothing will get a kid laughed at quicker in school than the discovery of lice. No matter that lice are more likely to be found on clean hair than on dirty hair or that it is rarely the fault of the child, peers will inevitably mock any school mate who is sent home until a lice problem is cleared up. This can be pretty hard on any kid.

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Probably the most common pest that has to be dealt with in any household in North America is the fly. Both fruit flies and house flies grow to plague like populations in some areas of the continent during the warmer months. In this article, we will take a look at just what is the problem with the house fly. Keep in mind that when we talk about house flies we are talking about a few dozen different species, but in general the problems that come with flies are the same.

They are annoying

Most people will agree that the biggest problem with house flies is that they become extremely irritating. The noise of their wings is enough to get you running for a swatter during the day and can drive you insane at night time. They are unpleasant to look at, and it is disgusting to see a fly walking around on your food!

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Sometimes the best decision you can make when it comes to pest control is to find out what problems, exactly, you can expect when you find a specific pest taking up residence in your home or garden. In some cases you might find that you really don’t mind the “pest” at all.

Analysis of the situation is a big part of the integrated pest control management approach. It’s good to know what you can expect so you can make the decision about whether or not to call your local pest control company to take care of a pest. One common complaint is leveled at the gopher. I am sure that we all agree that in some cases gophers can indeed be pests, but let’s take a look at what exactly they do that is detrimental.

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Few species are more destructive than those that have been introduced by humans to areas instead of developing alongside the other species in the region, and there is no better example in the United States than that of the fire ant. There are a couple of different species of fire ant that have been imported to the country as well as a couple that occur naturally, and the imported species are rapidly increasing in number.

In addition to their ability to breed and adapt quickly, and the fact that they are incredibly tough insects, the fire ant probably packs more of a punch as a problem pest than any other insect. They may not yet have the population numbers or range of the common house fly, but where they occur they cause a number of different problems which run the gamut from the physical to the economical and even the ecological. Let’s take a look at the different problems that fire ants cause.

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If you live in an area of the United States which has a huge deer population, you know exactly the kind of problems this largest of the vegetarian pests can cause. Deer numbers are very hard to keep under control due to a decreasing lack of interest in hunting, great pressure from anti-shooting lobbyists, mild weather, and a dearth of natural predators. As a result deer have become a big issue as pests in many areas of the country. Let’s take a look at some of the problems you can expect from deer.

* Garden destruction. Deer are roughly ten times the size of other common pests, and that means that they can easily inflict ten times the amount of damage at a time. The time is usually at night, as that is when the naturally shy deer, along with most other mammal pests, are most comfortable with. In one night one or two deer can bring total destruction to an unprotected garden; not only will they eat most of the tender plants and vegetables, but their sharp hooves will crush anything they leave behind. Many hobby gardeners have awakened in the morning to a couple month’s worth of work destroyed in a single night by hungry deer.

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Most species of ants are considered pests, but some deserve the reputation more fully than others. Fire ants are probably the worst kind of ant pest as far as their general evilness goes, but carpenter ants sit solidly in the middle, just above sugar ants. Let’s take a look at what it is about carpenter ants that qualify them as pests.

* No one likes to see ants. The first thing to look at when it comes to the carpenter ant is the same pest quality that applies to all ant species; ants have their place, but they are not in the home. No one likes to see a troop of ants going across their basement floor or around their windowsills, and all ants seem to have a way of finding any food you may have lying around, including fruit.

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If you have a bear pest problem, you have a very big problem, in every sense of the word. For such a large animal, bears can be very hard to control and outside of sprawling urban metropolises black bears cause problems in almost every state in the country. If you have bears around, here are some of the areas in which bears cause problems that you can expect if you don’t exercise sound integrated pest management strategies.

* Threats. One of the biggest problems with bears is that they are immensely powerful and in areas where they are used to humans or unfamiliar with humans as a possible threat, they can be very dangerous. Bears know that their size makes them king, and although most of the time they don’t throw their weight around direct conflicts between humans and bears never end in favour of the humans. They are especially aggressive when they have babies with them, and black bears are also known for predatory behaviour, making them a serious threat to children in particular. And of course if a bear feels threatened, it poses the greatest danger of any common pest.

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Part of the approach when it comes to integrated pest management is understanding how and why a pest species is likely to show up around your home or garden. Once you know what kind of foods a pest prefers and where it is likely to make a home, you can use the knowledge to create preventative measures so that the particular pests don’t show up in huge numbers.

It’s important to note that integrated pest management strategy operates with the fundamental principle that pest species will not be annihilated. For decades peoples have worked to eliminate designated pest species, and most efforts have led to spectacular failure, even increasing the numbers of pests that we wished to eliminate! IPM means using the least toxic approach to pest control and preventing pest problems by denying pests their ideal conditions.

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The new approach to pest control is known as integrated pest management, and it is all about understanding how pests work and using that knowledge to limit their numbers. Limiting pest numbers using the integrated system means selecting the least toxic means of control possible, in order to minimize the potential harm to organisms other than the pest involved.

Integrated pest management also means recognizing that in many cases, total elimination of the pest in question is just not possible. Even with the incredibly dangerous and toxic campaigns used for the last five decades or so, no pest was ever totally eradicated; part of the secret of being a good pest is to be resistant to a lot of forms of poison control and so on, and to reproduce so quickly that some portion of the population is bound to survive. Pest control today is more about managing a certain number of pests to ensure that they do not get out of control; fortunately small mammals such as gophers are easy to manage in this way, and unlike insects smaller rodents may actually have a local population wiped out or at least forced to go elsewhere with good management. And the key to this management is prevention.

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Termites are one of the most dreaded of all household insect pests, because by their very nature they are guaranteed to cause real damage to your home. Other wood eating insect pests such as carpenter ants only bore into wood as part of an effort at home making, and therefore won’t destroy it totally, but given time voracious termites can do an incredible amount of structural damage.

The natural reaction of the home owner when his or her investment is threatened is to annihilate the problem, but years of combat against termites and other insect household pests has shown that we do more damage to ourselves with toxic approaches than we do to the pests. Integrated pest management means using a working knowledge of the pests in question not only to eliminate problems but to prevent future infestations from occurring. Let’s take a look at some ways to protect your home from termites.

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