East Rutherford: Home of the Giants and Jets

Good Luck Charms & Unfortunate Infestations

Pest infestations are found both indoors and outdoors in East Rutherford. The inviting landscape makes the area especially appealing to creatures seeking food, shelter, and a place to reproduce.

Pantry months are common infestations that enter your home through store-bought packages; they’re most often found in flour, cornmeal, crackers, pasta, dried fruit, nuts, and sunflower seeds. A female can lay up to 400 eggs, allowing infestations to flourish in pantries and kitchen cabinets. While the larvae eat, the adults don’t; their only job is to reproduce. Clover mites are exceedingly tiny, typically smaller than a pinhead. They’re more closely related to spiders than insects. When crushed, they leave a red stain of internal pigments (often mistaken for blood).

Ladybugs are a type of beetle known as a symbol of good luck in some cultures. Despite their name, they are not exclusively female; their title comes from the “Beetle of Our Lady,” a reference to the Virgin Mary. Even so, ladybugs eat in a way that is not very ladylike: They can consume up to 50 aphids a day, the equivalent of a human eating 300 hamburgers.  

Crickets commonly gather in garden beds, sheds, foundation cracks, basements, crawl spaces, and garages. They’re solitary animals (and, like ladybugs, often viewed as signs of good fortune), but infestations can happen if they’re attracted to a common food source. When swarms do occur, these pests are hard to manage, partly due to a cricket’s ability to hide, nocturnal tendencies, and sensitivity to vibrations. They’re also fast, excellent jumpers; some species can jump 20 times their body length, similar to a human jumping half a football field. 

East Rutherford properties are prone to pest infestations of all kinds. Big or small, we treat them all!