Martin Pest Control

03/11/2026

Are you seeing wasps during the recent warm up? This can help you understand what you are seeing. Give us a call if you have any questions 774-210-9789.

The winter chill still clung to the shadows of the Berkshires as Beatrix, a queen Northern Paper Wasp (Polistes fuscatus), began to stir. Unlike the bright yellow invasive cousins that arrived from Europe decades ago, Beatrix was a true New Englander—cloaked in deep, mahogany browns and subtle rust-colored bands that matched the fallen oak leaves of the Massachusetts forest floor.
She had spent the last five months tucked into a tiny crevice within a rotting hemlock log. Her body had been filled with a natural "antifreeze," keeping her cells from crystalline death even when the February temperatures plunged below zero.
As the March sun finally hit 70°F, Beatrix uncurled her legs. She was groggy and ravenous. Her first flight was wobbly, her wings buzzing with a low hum as she sought out the first snacks of the season: sweet, rising maple sap and the tiny nectar-filled cups of early spring wildflowers.
Refueled, she flew toward a familiar garden shed. She wasn't just a survivor; she was an architect. Finding a dry spot under the eave, she began to scrape weathered gray wood from an old cedar fence. Mixing the fibers with her saliva, she spat out a bead of paper pulp and began to build.
First, a tiny anchor—the pedicel. Then, a single hexagonal cell. Inside that one room, she laid her first egg. For the next few weeks, Beatrix would be a "lone wolf," hunting caterpillars and defending her tiny fortress entirely on her own until her first daughters hatched to take over the chores of the kingdom.

03/08/2026

Those tunnels in your lawn aren't what you think.

I'm an Eastern Mole. And I have never eaten a single blade of grass. I'm a carnivore. My entire diet is underground insects, grubs, and earthworms.

The thing actually eating your grass roots is the Japanese beetle grub — a white C-shaped larva living in the top few inches of soil. That's what I'm hunting when I dig. A single mole eats tens of thousands of grubs per year.

The tunnels you see on the surface are hunting runs. I push through soft soil following grub trails the same way a dog follows a scent. The lawn lifts slightly above the tunnel. It looks messy. But underneath, the grub population is being controlled for free.

Those tunnels also aerate compacted soil and improve drainage. Grass roots grow better in soil that a mole has worked through than in soil that's been left compressed.

The brown patches that show up in late summer are usually grub damage, not mole damage. Removing the mole removes the control. The grubs stay.

🌿 If you have mole tunnels:

- Press the raised turf back down with your foot — the grass recovers in a few days
- The tunnels mean your soil has a healthy insect population, which means healthy soil biology overall
- If the tunneling is concentrated in one area, that's where the grub population is highest — the mole is showing you where the real problem lives
- A well-watered lawn softens the surface and reduces visible tunnel ridges

The tunnels aren't damage. They're job sites 🌱

03/02/2026

In the quiet, snow-draped woods of New England, the survival of a carpenter ant colony depends entirely on where they spent the autumn.
The Frozen Frontier: Survival in the Wild
For the millions of ants nesting in hollowed oak trees or rotting pine stumps, winter is a state of suspended animation known as diapause.
Natural Antifreeze: As November chills the soil, the ants’ bodies produce glycerol, a biological antifreeze that prevents their cells from crystallizing in the sub-zero temperatures.
The Great Huddle: They retreat deep into the heart of their wooden fortresses, often below the frost line. Thousands of workers cluster tightly around the queen, using their collective body mass to maintain a stable microclimate.
Metabolic Slowdown: Their heart rates drop and their oxygen consumption plummets by up to 90%. They do not eat; instead, they survive on fat and protein reserves stored in their bodies from a summer of foraging.
The Secret Life Inside the Walls
While their outdoor cousins are frozen in time, carpenter ants that have infiltrated a heated home live a very different winter story.
False Spring: The consistent 68-degree warmth of a New England colonial or Cape-style home tricks the colony into staying active.
Winter Excavation: While you are shoveling the driveway, these ants may be silently "sanding" the interior of your wall studs. They don't eat the wood—they chew it into fine, sawdust-like frass to expand their nesting galleries.
Midnight Foraging: On quiet winter nights, you might hear a faint rustling or crinkling sound behind the drywall—the audible evidence of a mature colony at work.
The February Surprise: In late winter, a mature indoor colony may even release winged swarmers. Seeing large, winged black ants on a windowsill while snow is still on the ground is a definitive sign of an established indoor nest.

If you suspect an infestation give us a call at 774-210-9789 to identify nesting sites before the spring thaw.

02/20/2026

That dead skunk on your commute this morning isn't random.

It's February. That was a male skunk. He was walking 5 miles in the dark to find a female. He's been doing this every night for 3 weeks. He crossed 4 roads to get to her den.

He didn't make it across the fifth.

THE BIOLOGY OF FEBRUARY SKUNK DEATHS:

Male skunks begin roaming in late January. They walk 3-5 miles per night — 10x their normal range — following scent trails to locate females. They are single-minded. They cross every obstacle: roads, highways, driveways, parking lots.

February is the statistical peak of skunk road mortality in North America. 60% of annual skunk deaths occur in a 6-week window from late January through early March.

The numbers:
→ Male skunks travel at 1.5-2 mph — slow enough that even a 25 mph car gives them no escape time
→ They are most active between 9pm and 3am
→ They do NOT run from headlights. Their defense strategy is to STAND AND SPRAY, not flee. This works against predators. It does not work against a 4,000-pound vehicle.
→ A female rejects an average male 3-4 times before accepting. Each rejection sends him back across every road he already crossed.

WHAT THAT SMELL MEANS:

When you smell skunk at night in February, you're smelling a proposal. The female sprayed the male because she wasn't ready. He'll be back tomorrow. And the next night. And the next.

Every morning in February, the skunks on your road are males who ran out of second chances.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
□ Slow to 25 mph on residential roads after dark through early March
□ Watch for small, slow-moving shapes at the road edge — they won't run
□ If you smell skunk at night, expect road crossings for the next 2-3 hours
□ Peak crossing times: 9pm-midnight and 3am-5am

That smell isn't a nuisance. It's mating season. And your commute runs through the middle of it.

01/22/2026

We know it’s tempting to help when winter weather sets in—but please don’t share snacks with wildlife. 🦌🦝🦨🐿️🦆🦃❄️

Supplemental feeding may feel kind, but it often does more harm than good. Although it is usually done with good intentions, feeding wildlife can spread disease, attract predators, increase road crossings and vehicle collisions, cause aggression and injury, and teach animals to rely on people instead of their natural food sources.

The good news? Wildlife have adapted over thousands of years to handle deep snow, cold temperatures, and harsh winds by changing their behavior and using stored energy.
Keep our wildlife wild!

07/04/2025

Happy 4th of July! We are closed for the weekend! See you monday 7/7/25!

04/28/2025

A resident called us to report seeing a skunk inside a trap in another resident's backyard.

Nearly at the same time, a relative of the resident with the trapped skunk, also called us, reporting that there was a skunk inside a trap, set by her father. The caller wanted us to remove the trap and skunk and take it elsewhere.

Both parties stated that the skunk had been inside the trap for several days, and one stated that it was 'flipping out'.

Of course it was 'flipping out'-it was trapped. It was likely frightened, hungry, dehydrated, and possibly separated from its nursing babies.

A few things:

🦨 Nuisance wildlife cannot be trapped and relocated in MA.

🦨This is an even more serious wrongdoing in the Spring, when young wildlife can peril absent their mother's nurturing.

🦨Healthy trapped wildlife must be released right where it was found. The only alternative is euthanasia.

🦨Stress from entrapment can alone become life-threatening for wildlife.

🦨An animal left inside a trap is cruel, let alone unlawful.

🦨Only MA licensed Problem Animal Control (PAC) Agents can set traps for removal of nuisance (healthy) wildlife.

🦨PAC Agents who work with residents (and us) to assist with nuisance wildlife, either check in with the residents, ask us to observe, or visit the property themselves-within a couple of hours of a set trap. And such traps are removed when such monitoring, release or removal is not possible close to immediately upon entrapment.

🦨'A person shall not use, set, place, maintain, manufacture or possess any trap for the purpose of capturing furbearing mammals, except for common type mouse and rat traps, nets, and box or cage type traps, as otherwise permitted by (MA) law.'

🦨And if one has taken the time to learn how and for what reason to set a trap (legally), one should certainly take the time to learn how to release an animal-including an untargeted animal-from said trap.

Most lawn and garden stores and internet sales, can sell traps to anyone- without ensuring the buyer is licensed to trap, nor does the seller need to provide the buyer with information on humane trapping, nor state trapping and wildlife laws. This is unfortunate.

The skunk in this case was ultimately released from the trap, once brought to our attention, though it was woefully after a number of days had passed.

The (thankfully conscious and relatively alert) skunk, pretty quickly exited the property, and our hope is that it will be ok- emotionally and physically-and that if it does have babies for which to care, that it is strong enough to provide such for them-and that the babies have survived the number of days in which their mother was absent from them.

Please-do not take nuisance wildlife issues into your own hands. It is illegal. It is cruel. It is heartbreaking.

It is also an ineffective solution, as wildlife does coexists with us, and trying to eradicate one skunk, or one raccoon, or one ground hog, or a few chipmunks, from your yard, is not going to stop other wildlife from visiting your property.

The most effective solution to minimize wildlife on your property, is through preventing inhabitation, by:

🦨removing food sources (including bird feeders), which whether intentional and/or unintentional, attracts wildlife;

🦨keeping lids secured on trash barrels and not putting out trash until the morning of its scheduled pickup;

🦨cleaning drip trays and other backyard food leftovers after grilling/entertaining;

🦨cutting back overgrown grass, weeds, shrubs, overgrown brush and compost areas;

🦨sealing off the underneath area of sheds, decks and porches (before animals create dens inside them- so not to block them inside);

🦨using bright motion sensor lights as a deterrent.

If you have a nuisance wildlife concern, please call us so that we can help you address it-both lawfully and humanely.

Thank you to the resident and caller who reported this trapped skunk to us- another day or so and it may truly have been too late...

[Photo: skunk inside a trap. Photo by MoonShine Wildlife Rehabilitation Cedar Park, TX. Their mission is ‘to promote compassion and respect for all wildlife; to rescue and rehabilitate sick, injured, orphaned and displaced wildlife and release them back into their appropriate habitat]

02/05/2025

Bird feeders feed more than birds and can cause major problems in and around your home.

Although you may be a big fan of snacks, please don’t share them with wildlife. Sharing isn’t caring and supplemental feeding of wildlife typically does more harm than good.

Feed sites congregate wildlife into unnaturally high densities, which can:
🔸Attract predators and increase risk of death by wild predators or domestic pets
🔸Spread diseases among wildlife or cause other health issues (e.g. Rumen acidosis in deer, Aflatoxicosis in turkeys)
🔸Cause aggression and competition over food, wasting vital energy reserves and potentially leading to injury or death;
🔸Reduce fat reserves, as wild animals use energy traveling to and from the feeding site;
🔸Cause wildlife to cross roads more frequently, therefore increasing vehicle collisions;
🔸Negatively impact vegetation and habitat in areas where feeding congregates animals.

Wildlife have adapted over thousands of years to seasonally change their behavior to adapt to harsh winter weather, including deep snow, cold temperatures, and high winds. Read more at bit.ly/MA-winter-wildlife

11/19/2024

07/05/2024

Closed for July 4th weekend! We'll be back Monday 7/8. Enjoy!

Send a message to learn more

04/30/2024

www.martinpestcontrol.net

Looking for a licensed individual to work Boston, South Shore, Metro West & Rhode Island areas.