Pest Control in Coalinga, CA

Coalinga is a west-side oil town set against the Coast Range foothills, far from the irrigated orchard country, and its pest pressure comes off the dry hills rather than the farm. The surrounding rangeland is open, sun-baked grassland, and California ground squirrels honeycomb it with burrows. As the hills cure brown and food dries up in late summer, the squirrels push toward the irrigated green of yards, parks and home landscaping, undermining slabs, patios and foundations with their digging. Field crickets erupt from the same dry ground in late summer and early fall, drawn to lights at night in numbers that pile up at doorways and work their way into garages and homes.

The dry terrain also favors spiders — black widows in the rock piles, woodpiles, garages and block walls typical here — and as the rangeland dries, house mice and deer mice test the structures at the town’s edge. Much of Coalinga was rebuilt after the 1983 earthquake, so a lot of the housing stock is of that era, with the slab and block construction that gives squirrels, crickets and spiders their gaps and harborage. Summers are hot and water is the prize, so whatever is outside eventually tries the house. The work here is about the perimeter and the burrows, not an orchard fence line.