Pest Control in Columbia, Maryland

Columbia sits just south of Ellicott City, a planned community James Rouse started in 1967 and built around villages like Wilde Lake, Oakland Mills, Harper's Choice, Long Reach, Hickory Ridge and River Hill. Each village has a mix of townhouses, condos, garden apartments and single-family homes, and almost everything connects to green space: Lake Kittamaqundi, Wilde Lake, Lake Elkhorn, the paths along the Little and Middle Patuxent, and the woods in between.

That design is lovely to live in, and it shapes pest control in Columbia in a big way. Woods and water are rarely more than a few minutes' walk from any front door, and a lot of homes share walls.

Shared walls in townhouse courts

Columbia has a lot of townhouses and condos, many from the '70s and '80s. Shared walls, shared attics in some older rows, and utility runs between units let mice travel. If you catch mice in your unit and the neighbors don't do anything, they'll keep coming back. Let your association know, and say what kind of building you're in when you call so the tech can plan for common walls and shared spaces. Mouse exclusion that covers the whole row works much better than one unit at a time.

Ants are the spring call. Odorous house ants come in from the mulch beds and trail into kitchens after heavy rain. Ant treatment that targets the colony lasts longer than spraying the trail.

Garden apartments and older condo buildings add trash rooms and dumpster corrals to the list. Mice, and now and then a rat, go where food sits overnight, so lids that close and bags that go out the same day matter as much as any trap. On the single-family streets it's the usual Howard County mix: carpenter ants in a damp deck ledger, termite swarmers near a slab patio, and yellow jackets in the ground by the path.

Paths, lakes and the tick and mosquito season

The open space that makes Columbia what it is also brings deer right up to the back patios, and the path edges are tick country. Homes backing onto wooded common land should check kids and dogs after time outside. Near the lakes and the stream valleys, Asian tiger mosquitoes breed in gutters, planters and anything else holding water. Tick and mosquito yard treatment can help on single-family lots, and dumping standing water helps everywhere.

Older single-family homes in villages like Wilde Lake and Harper's Choice are at the age where windows and soffits turn into a fall stink bug problem. Columbia's western edge runs into Clarksville and the River Hill side, and Elkridge's townhouse rows are a few minutes east on Route 100.

Around Columbia: Lake Kittamaqundi and the Columbia lakefront · Wilde Lake · Lake Elkhorn · Merriweather Post Pavilion · Little Patuxent River paths · Columbia Pike (US 29) (ZIP 21044, 21045, 21046)

Also serving Old Ellicott City, Dunloggin, Turf Valley, Valley Mede, St. Johns Lane, Catonsville, Clarksville, Woodstock and Marriottsville, Elkridge.