Crickie's New Jersey Pest Control Tips

When you find them in your northern New Jersey home, your first impulse is to squash these ugly-looking bugs. That’s a mistake most people don’t make twice! Looking like some prehistoric creature, stink bugs are gray to brown with long spidery-looking legs and antennae. These insects have a knobby, shield-shaped back that has the appearance [...]

The first cool nights of late summer signal New Jersey insects that it’s time to seek shelter for the cold winter ahead. A number of insects — stink bugs, Asian lady bird beetles, native lady bugs, boxelder bugs and cluster flies — creep into northern New Jersey homes each fall to overwinter in wall voids [...]

Asian tiger mosquitoes pose a new threat to residents of northern New Jersey. A serious problem in nearby Mercer and Monmouth counties, the Asian tiger mosquito has become a public-health threat in recent years. This mosquito prefers human to animal blood. Its bite can transmit West Nile virus, Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever and Chikungunya virus.
Unlike common [...]

Carpet beetles are a persistent household and commercial pest in northern New Jersey which is home to several species of this voracious insect. These small, 3/8-inch long black beetles were given their name for their appetite for carpeting, but these insects can cause significant damage to a wide variety of fiber and wood products as [...]

Most people describe them as tiny, gray armadillos. Called pillbugs but also known as wood lice, these small pests are not actually insects but tiny crustaceans like shrimp and crayfish. Pillbugs have seven pairs of legs attached like fringe to flat, oval bodies. Their bodies are covered with overlapping protective plates that give them their [...]

The dog days of summer may still be a month off, but the mercury is already climbing into the triple digits. If you have pets that are used to spending the day romping outdoors, they’ll be whining to come inside to escape the heat. Before letting pets inside your northern New Jersey home, you might want [...]

The wet spring has caused earwig populations to explode in northern New Jersey, eliciting complaints from homeowners in Bergen, Passaic, West Essex and Morris counties. Garden scavengers, earwigs are about 1 inch long with dark brown flattened bodies and characteristic cerci that protrude from the end of the abdomen. It’s their fierce-looking, curved, forceps-shaped cerci that provoke [...]

Relatively harmless but endlessly annoying, mayflies have started swarming in northern New Jersey. An annual June pest in areas near open water, hundreds of mayflies can be found hovering near ponds, streams, lakes, golf course water features and subdivision retention ponds. These spindly flying  insects can become an intolerable nuisance near restaurants and outdoor dining areas. [...]

If you see tiny flies hovering near the bananas on your kitchen counter or buzzing around the trash can in your northern New Jersey home, fruit flies have come visiting. These tiny flies are just 1/8 inch long with tan-colored bodies and distinctive red eyes. Fruit flies are so named because they feed and breed on fruit. [...]

Like mini bombardiers, they strafe your front porch light, buzzing noisily as they fly in erratic circles that often result in collisions with visitors trying to dodge their attacks as they attempt to enter your northern New Jersey home. Heavy-bodied, hard-shelled June bugs can turn the front porch of your northern New Jersey home into [...]