White Mold on Subarea Dirt
This white mold was growing on the ground, under a house in Arnold California.
There were beetle larvae living under the fungal mat.
Comparison of the Rescue Disposable Fly Trap and a Chinese knock-off
I did a side-by-side test of the effectiveness of the Rescue Disposable Fly Trap and a Chinese knock-off. The difference is almost shocking: the Chinese fly traps captured just a tiny fraction of what the Rescue traps did. This video shows the results after one week. I have both versions of these traps placed all around the property, and the results are the same: the Chinese traps capture few flies, while the Rescue traps end up being packed solid with flies. It could be 100 to one, or more, in the catch effectiveness. There is no question that the Rescue fly trap’s attractant is far superior to that provided by the Chinese company.
Plus, the Rescue traps have the attractant built into the unit, so you just add water, and the plastic holding the attractant dissolves. You have to cut open the Chinese trap’s attractant and pour it in, and you invariably get it on your hands.
What matters most is how well the trap works, and the Rescue has the Chinese knock-off beat by a factor that is probably 100 times.
Yellow jacket nest in grill of VW Van
A customer reported a nest of yellow jackets in the front grill of a VW van. That was an unusual nesting site!
7 August 2019, Campo Seco Road area, near Sonora. Technician Erik Brians took care of this one.
Aerial yellow jacket nest takes over a birdhouse
Ryles Richards discovered an unusual yellow jacket nest: aerial yellow jackets had built their nest around a bird house. On August 2, 2019, Ryles brought back this nest, pictured below, from a customer’s house in Groveland. We don’t often see aerial yellow jackets; most of ours are ground-dwelling. But this was extra special, being they used a birdhouse as a nesting platform, and managed to almost entirely encase it.
The customer did not want the birdhouse back, so we added it our collection of oddities.
Ryles Richards with the birdhouse yellow jacket nest/ Photo by Heather Nordstrom.
You can see the bird house inside the enveloping paper nest. Photo by Heather Nordstrom.
The birdhouse yellow jacket nest. Photo by Heather Nordstrom.
Backside view of the birdhouse, showing the backside of the yellow jacket nest.
Sideways view. The left side is the back of the birdhouse, and yellow jacket nest.
Looking up into the nest. The nest appears to have started on the eave of the birdhouse.
