Pest Control in Auberry, CA

Auberry sits in the oak-and-pine foothills northeast of Fresno, around 2,000 feet, and the forested setting changes the pest list entirely from the valley floor. Homes here are typically wood-sided, with decks, and set among oaks, pines and the moisture and leaf litter of the woodland — ideal conditions for the pests that eat and nest in wood. Carpenter ants are a defining call: they don’t eat wood but excavate galleries in it for nests, favoring the damp or decayed wood in siding, decks, fascia, window frames and firewood stacked against the house, and they forage out of the surrounding trees into the structure. Their coarse, sawdust-like shavings below siding and trim are the giveaway.

Termites press the same wood. Drywood termites infest the dry siding, eaves and deck boards above ground, while subterranean termites come up from the soil into wood-to-ground contact at decks, posts and foundations — both common in older foothill homes and anything with aging wood or moisture issues. Yellowjackets thrive in this warm, open foothill country, nesting in the ground and in wall and eave voids, and turning aggressive and numerous through late summer around decks and outdoor living. The oak woodland also brings wood rats into outbuildings and the occasional scorpion and spider into the rock and wood piles. For wood-sided homes on acreage, the recurring theme is protecting the structure itself from what the forest sends at it.