zwickdemarcus@gmail.com

You pull a towel off the bathroom floor or move a potted plant on the porch and there it is: a slim, dark-brown insect with a pair of menacing-looking pincers curling off its rear end. It scuttles for the nearest crack, and your first thought is whether the thing can hurt you. If you live … Read more

If you’ve ever pulled a mattress away from a garage wall and found a roach trail behind it, or moved a stack of forgotten boxes and watched something small and fast scatter, you already know: clutter and pests go together. Piled cardboard, old furniture, stacked yard debris, and a garage that hasn’t been cleared out … Read more

If your pet suddenly starts scratching nonstop in July or August, or you notice small bites around your ankles after mowing the backyard, summer rain is often the trigger. Mobile and Baldwin County’s pattern of heavy afternoon downpours followed by thick humidity creates near-perfect flea breeding conditions — both outdoors in shaded, damp yard areas … Read more

You walk into the garage the morning after a Gulf Coast downpour and the concrete is dotted with dozens of dark, curled-up millipedes — some still inching toward the door, plenty more already dead on the slab. Or you flip on the bathroom light and a fast, leggy house centipede darts behind the baseboard before … Read more

Not all cockroaches are the same problem. Spot a single large, reddish-brown roach lumbering across the floor at night and you have a different situation than finding several small, fast tan roaches scattering when you open the cabinet under the sink. In Mobile and Baldwin County, telling those two apart — the American cockroach and … Read more

Wasp and hornet colonies peak in size and aggression by late summer in Mobile and Baldwin County. Educational overview of species identification, where nests hide on local homes, and why DIY removal is risky.

You move a stack of towels or pull a box down from the attic, and a small, metallic, teardrop-shaped insect wriggles away in a quick, fish-like motion before disappearing into a crack. That is a silverfish — and while it is harmless to you, it is telling you something specific about your home. In Mobile … Read more

It usually starts after dark. You are lying in bed, the house is quiet, and then you hear it — a scratching, scurrying, gnawing sound moving across the ceiling or inside a wall. If you live in Mobile or Baldwin County, there is a good chance the visitor overhead is a rat, and which kind … Read more

You flip on the kitchen light at 11 p.m., something the size of your thumb skitters across the counter, and your stomach drops. If you live in Mobile or anywhere along the Baldwin County coast, that reddish-brown insect is almost certainly a palmetto bug — and you are not doing anything wrong to attract it. … Read more