Cowleys Pest Services Before & After Photos

I was dispatched to a home in Lanoka Harbor, a Lacey Township community, just north of Forked River. The homeowner had contacted Cowleys to take care of a flea problem in the home’s mechanical room that housed the HVAC equipment. Also, he asked us to replace the rotted plywood doors and wood framing used to access this small space located in the rear of the house. Many Cowleys technicians have extensive backgrounds in home repair and improvement, especially those of us assigned to either the Crawl Space Solutions By Cowleys Division, which specializes in helping homeowners resolve water, moisture, and high humidity problems in their crawl space, or our wildlife division where critter infestations are often accompanied by damage to insulation and other building materials.

As temperatures drop, mice will seek refuge in your home to escape the harsh winter elements. For a mouse, your home is paradise — it’s always warm and cozy, there are plenty of nooks and crannies to hide, there’s plenty of nesting materials,  and your kitchen offers an unlimited food supply. , 

Whenever we are called out to resolve a rodent infestation, we not only treat the infestation. It is critical to determine how these disease-carrying animals are accessing your home. Here, in this home in Keansburg, I determined that mice were gaining access through gaps around AC lines entering the home. Utility and telephone lines entering your home to are common access points for small rodents like mice and they are always on the top of my “must inspect” list. A small gap around wiring or pipes that we easily overlook is, for a mouse, a wide-open entrance way that offers 24/7 access  into your home. Unfortunately, because of their diminutive size, mice can slip through the smallest of gaps and cracks, and these openings can sometimes be a challenge to find. I set up traps in the home and sealed the entry point to prevent further access. These pictures show the “before and after”  sealing of this entry point.

I’ll be returning for a follow-up visit in two weeks to make sure that these overwintering mice are gone for good. 

Some wily squirrels were able to successfully deceive a previously hired nuisance wildlife serve at this Keansburg, NJ home and escape capture. Apparently, the technician focused on looking up and over the roof of this home for potential access points to try and keep the squirrels out. To be sure, squirrels are arboreal rodents and they often initially access the home by first making their way to the roof, usually by either by traversing wires coming into the home or using overhanging branches as a roadway. However, squirrels don’t always access the home through the roof, fascia, or  soffits. Good wildlife technicians have 360 degree thinking and look at the entire picture, always taking into account every possibility.

I first asked the homeowner where she was hearing most of the wildlife activity. This often gives me a good starting point of where to start the inspection for entry points. She told me that most of the noise was coming from inside the wall voids of the first floor — nowhere near the roof or attic. Based on this, I decide to first inspect below rather than above. Sure enough, these squirrels were gaining access to the home behind the plaster walls of the living room from below the front porch.  

The best course of action was excluding them by setting up a one-way device over the opening that allowed them to leave the home, but prevent their return. For the rodents, it’s a one-way trip! After sealing this area and monitoring it for activity for two days, we sealed the opening for good.  We followed up with the homeowner who told us that she’s heard absolutely nothing in the walls after our exclusion. These squirrels were permanently evicted. Needless to say, after a few too many weeks of frustration, she was quite relieved that her squirrel problem was finally resolved.

Summer is not only a busy time for us, but for insects as well. This is time of year when many insects are most active. They are at their population peaks and working hard to expand their colonies. Hornets in particular rear their heads (and stingers!) in the summer. During the summer, we see hornets busily doing their construction work. They build their nests not only in trees, but often on man-made structures as well. We will find their perfect hexagonal chambers attached to soffits, inside garages, attics, on window sills and door frames, attached to exterior walls, and pretty much anywhere they can attach their nest “building materials.” Hornets make their own nesting material by mixing chewed-up wood pulp from tree bark mixed with their saliva, forming an enclosed nest around the comb where the queen lays her eggs.

Hornets nests can grow quite rapidly, with a surprising number of hornets living in what we would consider cramped quarters. Often, homeowners don’t even realize that they have a wasp infestation until the nest grows to a decent size, especially if the nest is formed in an area of the home or surrounding property that isn’t visited too often. Often, by the time a Cowleys tech is called out to the home, the nest has grown to the size of a melon. Once these guys get going building their nest, they mean business. Nest sizes can double in just a week!

These particular homeowners in Toms River, NJ called us after discovering a hornet's nest that was built, of all places, on the side of a raised playhouse in their yard. Fortunately, no one had yet been stung, but this was a potentially dangerous situation. Hornets usually don’t go out of their way to bother anyone. The problem is when someone unknowingly walks into the path of foraging wasps. With kids playing around this structure, there was a high risk of a swarm of wasps stinging children. This nest was not noticed immediately because it was built pretty high up on the playground— about twelve feet up a side wall of the structure. 

To treat this hornet infestation, I used an aerosol pyrethrin application attached to an extension pole to access the nest. After spraying, I waited for about 20 minutes for the application to take effect. This product immediately knocks down the wasp population, and after waiting, there were no more visible wasps swarming around the nest. Now, with a nest that was substantially inactive (of course, there could always be a few live wasps still hiding in the nest), I removed the nest with a scraper attached to the pole. I then bagged the nest to take it off the property. Finally, I treated the area where the nest was attached that would help prevent the Hornets from trying to reconstruct the nest. 

This type of stinging insect assignment is very satisfying to me. When finished, I knew that by removing this nest, I likely prevented some innocent kids from being attacked by a swarm of hornets just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Recently, I was called out to help homeowners in Toms River, NJ, who were having a troublesome mouse infestation problem. As temperatures drop, rodents will seek to overwinter inside our warm houses to escape the harsh outdoor elements. Their very survival depends on it. The objective for a homeowner is to eliminate potential entry points into your home so they go elsewhere. Mice will find the tiniest gaps, cracks, and opening around the foundation to enter the basement or crawl space and once inside, they have no problems traveling through wall voids throughout the home, usually winding up in the kitchen foraging for food debris.

Conducting a careful exterior perimeter inspection, I determined how the mice were getting in. Mice only need an opening around the diameter of a dime, so you have to be systematic and methodical, inspecting every inch of the perimeter. Here, I found holes in the crawl space vents and access door as well as spaces in the garage door jambs (the trim around the perimeter of the garage door that helps keep out insects and small critters. Because this trim is exposed to the elements, they are susceptible to splitting, rotting or warping, creating an opening for pest entry. I sealed the openings with an expandable foam, and also set up some rodent bait traps in strategic locations. I set up a two-week follow up to re-inspect and check the bait in the traps to determine the level of rodent activity. With the access points blocked and traps set, this mouse infestation should be quickly resolved.