Swarming ants, flying bats, and raccoons: Wet spring means an abundance of tiny critters in the Colorado mountains
Aspen Times
Tate Eberly/Instinct Pest Management
It’s a big year for tiny things, ants included. Abundant moisture is helping ant colonies thrive. What other critters are those living in the Colorado mountains dealing with?
Tate Eberly, owner of Instinct Pest Management, moved to New Castle with his family in 2019 after visiting the Roaring Fork Valley yearly over the past decade.
“Within my first month, I found my calling in pest control as ‘The ExtermiTater’,” he said. “The last three and a half years have been such a unique experience. Steve Irwin was my idol growing up, and I’ve been told that I am the mountain version of him.”
Eberly has wrangled hornets and raccoons, hauled off deer, snake and small critter carcasses, and educates clients on safe handling with insects and small to large mammals. This year’s calls are for the tiniest on the spectrum: ants.
With loads of moisture comes loads of breeding grounds for insects.
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“This year has been a big one for ants, specifically pavement ants, which are commonly found around kitchens, walkways, and stone yard fixtures,” Eberly said.
Ants thrive on consistent outside moisture to advance their colony’s growth. Too much rain and the colony can pick up, eggs and all, and relocate, possibly somewhere drier — like your home.
According to Colorado State University, most ants that are found in homes nest outdoors and enter homes only to search for food or water, and almost all ants are workers, wingless females, that search for food and maintain the colony. The university recommends removing sources of food and water to reduce visitation of ants and help to more effectively use baits for ant control.
Stinging insects
“The rise in calls I get about ants is also directly correlated to wasp activity being dampened by the consistent rain,” Eberly said. “The ants’ longtime arch-nemesis is the wasp, and their war with each other is as old as time itself. Stinging insects are my most favored battle I have fought consistently over the years.”
He is also slightly allergic to insect stings; therefore, he attempts every precaution in the book not only to protect himself, but people’s homes.
“I focus my control on paper wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets. Bees are so important, and as a responsible steward of the environment, I’m always willing to educate the public about their necessity,” he said.
Over at Roaring Fork Valley Co-op in Carbondale, though, R.B., a sales associate, had a very needy customer this week. He said a gentleman from a local hotel company came in and purchased more than $500 worth of flying insect traps, including wasp and flies. He actually cleared the co-op’s shelves.
R.B. admitted that he too had ant issues this year and bought traps.
“We live on an ant hill, what do you expect?” he said.
Bats
The more insects, the greater a bat’s food source. A wetter-than-average spring and early summer means plentiful insect populations for bats.
“Usually, we get a handful of bats each summer to test for rabies. And, from time to time, we hear about mountain lion and bear scratches,” said Carlyn Porter, emergency preparedness and response program administrator for Pitkin County.
She explained there’s quite a population here in the Roaring Fork Valley, and sometimes they roost in people’s homes to have their babies in the summer.
“When the babies learn to fly, they sometimes wander into living space and get trapped. People get very spooked when they find bats inside,” she said. “Then, I do a rabies risk assessment and sometimes refer folks for vaccinations. Every single summer.”
Daniel Neubaum, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife bat biologist and researcher, published a study on the Snowmass Village bat colonies in 2018 and noted there are seven bat species: Little brown bat, big brown bat, long-legged myotis, western small-footed myotis, hoary bat, silver-haired bat, and Townsend’s big-eared bat.
“Juvenile bats do not fly well and are often crashing into things,” he said. “Often in July, bats found in living spaces are naive, young bats that are trying to fly and making mistakes. They are often not bats that are sick.”
Raccoons get all the party invites
“Pest control operators really have the best party stories; albeit hopefully the listeners have a relaxed sense of humor,” Eberly said. “I went out on a call out one day, and to my surprise, the homeowner had a pack rat inside of a Guinea pig cage in their living room.”
The homeowners claimed they found it on the side of the road with their kid and thought it was a chinchilla.
“I had to be the bearer of bad news and let them know it wasn’t a safe idea to keep it as a pet,” Eberly said. “The kid wasn’t happy with me about blowing the critter’s cover, but the parents had to know the potential consequences of that unique circumstance.”
Thursday morning, Eberly responded to a raccoon and skunk call in Carbondale.
“This lady has a pack of six skunks at her house, and her dog has been sprayed already,” he said. “This raccoon has been trying to bully the skunks, so then anytime the raccoon bothers the skunk, it would spray and make her yard smell.”
He was tasked with getting both the skunks and the raccoon out.
“The smells were awful. It’s like a trash panda versus Pepé Le Pew gang war,” he said.
In a previous encounter with a raccoon, he was called to investigate some bird activity in an attic. He entered an access point through the garage, and as he is looking through the insulation, a couple of baby raccoons popped their heads up to his surprise, and suddenly he heard the angry momma behind him.
“She was between me and the attic access, and I was between her and her babies. I had to beeline away from her location, pry the other access point open with my pocketknife above the master bedroom, and jump down,” Eberly said. “The clients were waiting in the garage for me, so to say they were shocked that I came out from the door into the house instead is an understatement.”
Recommendations
Eberly said the best thing you can do for your home is make sure to trim back the tree branches and bushes every year, so they’re not overcrowding and touching the outside walls of your home. Overcrowding creates a convenient highway for bugs and rodents to crawl all over your house.
When you are being swarmed by stinging insects, it’s a natural human reaction to panic and start swatting and possibly running away.
“I’m here to tell you as a professional, resist that urge. The best course of action when being swarmed by wasps, hornets, or yellow jackets is to take a deep breath, hold it in, and slowly walk away,” Eberly said. “Stinging insects are attracted to the carbon we produce as we breathe, so by holding your breath, and not swatting them, this will make you semi-invisible to your attackers.”
This story is from AspenTimes.com.
