Live Your Best Life Barefoot
Live Your Best Life Barefoot
EP #19: How to protect your home from four-legged invaders, like rats & ants.
If you've recently purchased a new home in Florida this episode of the Best Life Barefoot podcast is for you!
In this episode we talk to Jason Woodbury, owner and operator of Infinite Pest Solutions He educates us on ways to prevent rats and ants from entering your home, and even gives a few personal experiences that will make you truly laugh out loud. Jason also gives us his secret local haven's for the best seafood in SWFL!
You can contact Jason and the team from Infinite Pest Solutions at;
office@infinitepest.com
(239) 208-9918
To learn more:
https://barefootbungalowhomes.com/
Barefoot Bungalow Homes
9200 Bonita Beach Rd SE, Suite 100
Bonita Springs, FL 34135
(239) 350-5535
Welcome to the Live Your Best Life Barefoot podcast with your host Mary Mouritsen and the team at Barefoot Bungalow Realty
Speaker 2:Good morning, and welcome to the next episode of live your best life barefoot podcast. I'm here with Mary today. Ruth. Good morning.
Speaker 3:I'm doing good. We had a great event this weekend. I was so
Speaker 2:It's fun. It was fun watching all the kids play and with all the games, it was, it was very successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So thanks everyone who came out. It was a really, really fun Saturday and we have, we actually, it felt like
Speaker 2:Fall. It did fall up great weather.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was perfect weather, but a little Crisp
Speaker 2:Surprisingly, it was hard to give away free pies. Don't understand what it was hard to give away free pie, but what it was, but
Speaker 3:So we had a fun event and then another interesting thing more on our market side, on our market update, we noticed that the interest rates snuck down again. What that's crazy. I didn't think for some of, some of the people that are in the right bracket, they end up getting under 3% right now. Wow. So who knows how long that's going to last, if you're thinking about jumping on and buying a house, or if you haven't refinanced actually look at, look at your interest rates and see if that was a good option for you. So that's great news. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're excited to have a special guest with us. It's Jason Woodbury from Infinite Pest Solutions. Welcome Jason. Hi Jason.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been great knowing you, I actually know Jason personally, and I know he does a great job personally, because we actually use his services and have for three years now. So tell us a little bit about what you do.
Speaker 4:Well pretty basic stuff on, on the outset, but I own I'm the owner and operator of Infinite Pest Solutions. So we started, we opened up our doors four years ago and we currently have 15 employees altogether and another one coming in today. So,
Speaker 3:That's exciting Growing Quickly, very quickly. Good for you. Very exciting.
Speaker 2:So here in Florida, you have a big need for a pest guy though, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. It"s pretty much everyone needs pest control, whether it's for rodents or termites or ants. It's a, it's a big market. There's, there's a lot of bugs, a lot of need for it.
Speaker 2:So I'm in a new development and they're still building. So what do you think it has beneficial for me to start the pest control? Wait.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. So we have fire ants are really bad, bad on, in new developments. We're clearing out, you know, basically the Everglades and we're, we're invading their home and they're, it's, it's worse when it's brand new.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I'd seen him come from in my bathroom vent. They're falling down and luckily they're falling into the toilet, so I leave the lid open. So that's where they fall. But yeah, it's nasty. I don't know why I like, so they have to be in the attic then right in my, in my attic,
Speaker 4:We find them in attics all the time.
Speaker 2:So I'll be calling you. Ok perfect
Speaker 3:So I'm super interested about what is the most unusual thing you encounter more frequently than you would have expected here in Florida,
Speaker 4:Unexpected for who?
Speaker 3:I guess for you or the homeowner.
Speaker 4:It's not necessarily a secret, but most people don't know about it is we have really, really bad rats here. All of Florida, we, we call them the Rouses, right? Because we get so many people that moved down here from somewhere up north and they're used to mice, which are, you know, small. And then they find out that rats are just a common thing here. Really. It's not a matter of if you're going to get them. It's, it's a matter of when, because we have in, in the winter, when it gets cold, they get cold and they want to find a warm place. So they go into your attic, they'll, they'll find a way to chew into your attic. And then the other thing, when it starts to get rainy and, you know, in April, may t hey, they do also burrow in the ground. So when it starts raining, they, they get k ind o f d rowned out. So they, they go up again into your attic. So twice a year we have a big, a big, y ou k now, invasion of, of rats into p eople's houses.
Speaker 3:Really? So how do we prevent that? Or what do we do about that?
Speaker 4:Well, there's to mitigate that risk, we do rodent bait stations around the outside of the house. It's just, it's just to keep the population down because if it's left unchecked, they'll, they'll come in. And if we, if we use the bait to keep the population down, it's it lowers that risk now?
Speaker 2:Will they eat my ants in my attic.
Speaker 4:They will not eat your ants. So they'll eat your plumbing pipes, they'll eat your electrical wires. And that's something, they, they do a ton of damage. They they'll, they'll go into people's, the hood of the car they'll get going from underneath and they'll chew through the electrical harness. It happens all the time. Wow. and they'll also get into people's pool heaters. They'll get into people's, like I said, they're attics and do damage. They, I guess kind of like a secret thing that no one talks about, but it's actually very, very, very common.
Speaker 3:Well, so what's out in the open now, so we can all talk about it freely. No, no need to, no shame, no shame. If you've got rats, it's a common problem.
Speaker 4:And then, another common thing that people they ask about cause they hear that it's a problem, but they don't think it's a big problem is termites. Because they say, Hey, we have all concrete block construction. Why it w ould termites be a problem in my house. Right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:Well, the truth of the matter is there's a lot more wood in there than you'd think. So, even though there's concrete block is as the base of the construction, you've got paper in the, in the dry wood and in the dry wall, we've got furring strips, a lot of times that attaches the dry wall to the concrete block. We've got wood trim, we've got window frames, we've got doorframes, we've got the wood up in the attic. So there's, there's a lot more with wood then you think. So Florida is actually the top number one state for most termite damage.
Speaker 2:Wow. And you know what? You never see tents, you know how they tent the house. I never see that here. When we were in California, we saw it everywhere b ecause we lived in Huntington beach and there was always a tent up in the neighborhood throughout the whole year.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. That's more common here. Fort Myers beach, the older construction has a lot more of the dry wood termites. That's for that's fumigations for dry wood termites. And then there's another type of subterranean that does most of the damage here.
Speaker 3:Oh, so it's a different termite. Yeah. And what's the treatment for that?
Speaker 4:We use it in ground bait stations. For most of those, you can also get trench and treat. But it's yeah. It's a slow acting product. They take it back to the colony a nd i t kills the whole colony.
Speaker 2:So, so Jason, so the mini, the mini little ants, the micro ants, where did those come from? Cause when I moved here, I got micro ants in my car. So they had to treat my car. How do you get those? What, where do they come from?
Speaker 4:There's two really tiny ones. The most common one is called a ghost ant. Okay. And so the, the front half is dark colored, like most ants, but the back half of the body is clear, almost like a light yellowish color, but it's really difficult to see without like a magnifying glass. So you don't, you're only seeing halfway, but they are really tiny. They, I mean, where do they come from? They come from outside t here. Everybody gets, those, everybody gets,
Speaker 2:I thought it was from the transport. They transported my car here. Cause I got right after we got here and they were everywhere. Everywhere.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I have heard of, of transport, like the, where they parked their diesel trucks while they're waiting. They have really bad ants. A lot of times in their parking lots. We're
Speaker 3:Going to go with that.
Speaker 2:You can't prevent that at all either. Right. There's nothing to do to prevent it. Just treat it once it's in there. Yeah. Okay. Good.
Speaker 3:Yes. So let's back up a little bit. What brought you here and kind of your journey to pest control,
Speaker 4:You know, and I have several things that led me to pest control, but I'll tell you one or two little stories the first, the first experience. So I grew up on a farm in Idaho, you know, I, we had 10 acres and my grandpa had 80 acres right next door. But my first experience c ause we had mice in the house all the time and it was traumatic for my mom. She hated them. She'd jump u p on the table. One Saturday morning I was watching cartoons and I'd sneak upstairs to, I wa s, I was sneaking some potato chips and I reached my hand inside of the potato chips and there's a bi g fat mouse. That was my first traumatic experience with rod ents. I wil l te ll you the other one, But, when I was 19, I left, to be a missionary in Argentina. And after I'd been there for about a year and a half, I moved into a new apartment and we had, there was mosquitoes really bad. T here w as no air conditioning. So we were on t he second story apartment and we just sleep with the doors open. It's 110 degrees outside. No AC it was ridiculous. And mosquitoes would come in and eat like bite me at night. So we, we ended up closing the windows and suffering through it, trying to kill all the mosquitoes. But then I, I woke up one night covered in ants. They were eating me th ere, th ere w ere carnivorous an ts. And I had like 300 bites on me the next morning when I count on them. That was my second traumatic experience with an ts. I've had lots of traumatic experiences, but that's pa rt o f w hat got me started. My, my brother while I was in Argentina, he started in the pest control industry. And I told him about that and he's like, well, you should come and do this with me. So nice. So th at, that got me started. That was back in, 2 003 that I started pest control.
Speaker 2:Depends on the ants.
Speaker 3:Yes. We're reading the world of ants
Speaker 4:Getting my revenge side is I still have a kind of an immunity to fire ant bites now and stings so I'll still get stung and I still feel it, but my, my stings go away in about a day. Most people i t's it's several weeks and they get scarred
Speaker 3:From them. Interesting.
Speaker 4:Doesn't react anymore to that
Speaker 3:Stuff. All the things you didn't know, you didn't know. And that's
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 3:So tell me about a tip that our listeners can take away that they can use in their houses as far as rodents or pests,
Speaker 4:I'll say the number one tip, and this is good for, for both ants and for rodents is keep your trees and bushes and all vegetation trimmed. They can, I mean, they can climb up the walls, they can, rats can climb up stucco. But it's a little bit easier for them to climb up a tree onto your roof. S o if you have trees that are overhanging your roof, it's like an open door for t hem. And same thing with, with ants. If you have any trees, shrubs, bushes touching your walls. I mean, we're not, we're not treating your entire side of your house. We're typically treating, you know, the bottom three feet or u p on the eves. But if there's a bridge where they can avoid the product, they will. Okay. Anywhere where there's any foliage touching the house, it's going to make our products less effective. So that's just something you guys can do. Keep the trees, shrubs, bushes, anything away from the building.
Speaker 3:Okay. That's good advice. And then what we all want to know is what is your Southwest Florida tip for you or your family?
Speaker 4:Yeah. so I have, I have to, and this is coming from a guy I'm not a seafood guy. So if there's anyone who doesn't like seafood like me, but my wife loves it. There's a place in Naples called the Hog Fish Grill that has, has pretty good food, even for a guy that doesn't like it. And then if there's someone a little bit further north up in Fort Myers off of Alico road is a place called the Hookup Fish Market. It's like a food truck. He's, he's rehabbing the building. And so he still runs the food truck out in the parking lot, but he has some really, really good dishes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very good.
Speaker 4:And he has shrimp and lobster. He has all kinds of stuff, surprisingly for a food truck. You wouldn't expect it. So
Speaker 3:One of those are both ones I haven't heard of. So good, good tips. And last but not least, how can our listeners get ahold of you to get your help with their rodents that we're not talking about? And
Speaker 4:So our email is office@infinitepest.com. That's one easy way because typically when you hear a rat and it's at night and we're not going to be answering the phone at night, so that's an easy way. But also our phone nu mber i s( 239) 208-9918.
Speaker 3:Awesome. I'll be calling you and I'm just going to throw in my testimonial again, I've been using them for the last three years a week, opted not to have a cage Outback. Um, and they have kept our, our bugs down. We have an occasional, irritating mosquito, but even our mosquito populations has been fine. So, um, kudos. You guys do a great job.
Speaker 4:I do have one other thing to add in there. And this is for people buying a house, um, get a termite inspection done. It's not required. WDO would destroy an organism inspection and there's, I'll tell you get an expensive one. If you, if you don't. I mean, obviously we do them, but there's people out there there's companies out there that do it for free, but they're just the ones out there trying to sell you something. And then they're doing it for$50 and we're like, they're filling out the form, but they're not really doing a thorough inspection. So get someone, if it's not us get someone who's, who's charging more because they're going to be spending more time doing it. And if you're buying a house, you want a thorough inspection. Not
Speaker 3:Yeah. You want to know? Yeah. Yeah. That is really, really good advice to make sure that you don't have that issue.
Speaker 4:Yeah. We get lots of calls all the time. Well, I had a termite inspection, like how much did he charge you? 50 bucks. Okay. So you had a termite form filled out. He didn't actually get out and do what he should've done. He can't do it for that much.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's really good advice. Well, thank you again so much for coming on our program and all of our listeners, if you have somebody or something that you're curious about and would like to have us, uh, check it out for you and have them on our podcast, make sure you reach out to us. We're on facebook@barefootbungalowrealtyandatbarefootbungalowrealty.com. And as always, we want to remind you to live your best life.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the live, your best life barefoot podcast, sponsored by barefoot bundle of Realty. The learn more about barefoot bungalow, really go to www.barefootbungalowrealty.com or call 2 3 9 3 5 0 5 5 3 5.