Where does pest control spray in homes — Grace’s student essay
Where Does Pest Control Spray In Homes?
I’ve lived in Arizona for the past 8 years so I’d like you to envision the only insect I’ve ever worried about: scorpions. Now, I know if we’re speaking classically, a “true” insect needs 6 legs, 1-2 pairs of wings, and three body regions—making scorpions technically not an insect—but, living in Arizona, I have the most experience with scorpions so I hope you can excuse me for that.
Since we have that out of the way, I’d also like you to envision a big dirt plot of land right next to my home and, better yet, throw it into recent construction.
Add one plus one together and you win a mass scorpion intrusion for the unforeseeable future. During the first year of construction my mother had been stung multiple times (all on her fingers I might add), I was stung on my foot the night before working an 8-hour shift, and my best friend was unsuspectedly hit on her thigh.
To put this in context, my best friend had lived in Arizona for 16 years without getting stung and all it took was one sleepover in my room for her to become a scorpion’s victim.
Fortunately for the rest of my family’s bodily functions, we understood that so long as dry piles of dirt were being unearthed, we’d need some strong pest control. In Arizona there’s specific pest control for scorpions so once we found one we made sure they sprayed every corner. More specifically, I made sure they sprayed every corner (I was really upset about the foot fiasco).
Seeing that, I know where they are meant to spray when it comes to both in and out of the home. When spraying outside of the home, they would cover the surrounding bottom edges. No spray was aimed for the walls or anything above ground level unless it was a possible entry-point like the windows.
When it came to spraying inside, I noticed that either the liquid or the spray nozzle had changed. When outside, the spray was considered toxic as workers wore gas masks and my dog wasn’t allowed to go outside; however, when it was brought in the house, we were allowed to stay inside. That pushes me to believe it was a weaker strain of pesticide in order to keep residents comfortable. When our local pest control did spray in our home, I saw that the technique was almost exactly the same as done outside.
The only difference was the spray was never directed to walls nor windows and the spray didn’t fog up like the pesticide sprayed outside did. I also noticed that when both the inside and outside of my house was sprayed we wouldn’t find any scorpions but when we’d only spray the outside of the house we’d brace ourselves for running into a couple scorpions for the next week as they escaped the fumes into our homes. Having this knowledge, I would recommend anyone living in Arizona to spray both outside and inside the home.
To conclude, where does pest control spray in homes? Well, from my personal experience, scorpion pest control sprays around the edges and entry-points of your home and, if you have the option, always spray both the inside and outside of your home. Unless, of course, you want to have new roommates for a couple weeks.