The Termite Guy FAQs

Crickets come indoors seeking food, shelter, and moisture, especially during dry spells when they're looking for relief from the heat. Improperly stored food — including pet food left out — can also attract them.

Crickets aren't dangerous, but their chirping can be a real nuisance, and large populations can damage fabrics, paper goods, and seedlings.

Seal cracks and gaps around doors, windows, and foundations, reduce outdoor lighting that attracts them at night, and keep pantry items — including pet food — in sealed containers. Once an indoor population is established, professional treatment is usually faster and more reliable than store-bought traps.

Look for small reddish-brown bugs, dark excrement spots on mattress seams, blood spots on sheets, and clusters of itchy bites after sleeping. Bed bugs hide in mattress seams, headboards, and furniture joints during the day.

Yes — they travel through wall voids, along pipes, and through electrical outlets to reach adjacent units, which is why building-wide treatment is often necessary in multi-unit properties rather than treating just one unit.

Professional treatment is strongly recommended. Bed bugs have grown resistant to many over-the-counter products, can survive 20–400 days without feeding, and hide in cracks too small for typical sprays to reach effectively.

No — unlike many biting pests, bed bugs aren't known to transmit disease. Their bites can still cause allergic reactions, and the disruption to sleep and peace of mind is real, which is why most people want them gone fast.

Carpet beetles damage wool, silk, fur, and other natural fibers; wood-boring beetles tunnel through structural and decorative wood, leaving small exit holes and fine powder behind; and drugstore beetles infest stored food and spices, even chewing through packaging to reach it.

Look for small, round exit holes in wood surfaces, fine sawdust-like powder (frass) beneath them, and tunneling patterns just under the surface. Damage often isn't visible for two to five years after the initial infestation, since larvae develop slowly inside the wood.

Most beetles found around Southern California homes aren't dangerous to people, but several species are destructive to property — wood-boring beetles compromise structural and decorative wood, and carpet beetles damage fabric, furniture, and stored textiles.

Beetles are tough to control with over-the-counter products alone, especially once they're established in wood or fabric. Professional treatment identifies the specific species and targets it directly — call us for an inspection if you're seeing exit holes, frass, or fabric damage.

Outdoor time in wooded or overgrown areas, walking pets without preventative treatment, and wildlife or stray animals near your property are the most common ways ticks and fleas get introduced. Both pests reproduce quickly, so a small problem can become a full infestation fast.

Both can transmit serious diseases — ticks can spread Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever to people and pets, while fleas can transmit murine typhus and tapeworm. Pet owners especially should take both seriously, not just as an itchy nuisance.

Frequent vacuuming interrupts the flea life cycle by removing eggs from carpet and bedding, and keeping your yard mowed and free of debris reduces tick habitat — but established infestations typically need professional treatment for both the indoor and outdoor environment to fully resolve.

They help protect your pet directly, but they don't treat your yard or home environment, so an infestation can still take hold around your property even with pets fully protected. Ask your veterinarian about pet-specific prevention, and call us if you're seeing signs of an environmental infestation.

Web spinners (Embioptera) are small, silk-producing insects that build protective galleries across bark, rocks, and garden vegetation. They don't damage wood like termites or bite people — they're mainly a nuisance when their silk tunnels spread across ornamental plants and garden areas.

Web spinners are slender, about 15–20mm long, and build visible silk galleries across bark and plants rather than mud tubes. Termites, by contrast, target wood directly and travel through mud tubes or inside the wood itself — if you're not sure which you're seeing, an inspection will confirm it.