Las Vegas Valley yards prove hospitable to nature's tiniest creatures

They pay no rent, so they act much like deadbeat tenants. They come in search of food, water and above all, housing, just like people do.

Valley homeowners can find them living in their back-yard block walls. Various types of insects frequently find their way into the cavities of the walls and stake their claim.

Most invasions are mild, according to Rob Bettilyon, a subcontractor for several area home builders including Pulte/Del Webb. He said almost none of them are related to issues of home care or sanitation.

"Things in the desert are attracted to where the moisture is," said Bettilyon, service center manager for Western Exterminator. "With block walls, anything can hide in there. What they're looking for is moisture or food. That's why you don't see roaches and crickets jumping out in the desert; you'll find them near your house."

Argentine ants set themselves up in the block walls more often than any other nonpaying tenant, he said, and the presence of plants in the back yard can increase the wall's appeal to the potential multilegged occupant. Bark scorpions are the rarest of these, while "some" spiders can be found on occasion, and cockroaches, sow bugs and crickets can be found in them pretty much "all the time."

Bettilyon considers "bugs in the block wall" to be a problem valleywide, since he estimated the "majority" of the valley's back yards have block walls.

Still, a problem of this nature does not reflect poor house care on the part of the homeowner.

"Basically, even when you push the dirt up against the backside of the wall, you end up with air gaps," he said. "The insects only need a very, very small gap to enter the inside of the wall.

"They're looking for water -- water is the lifeblood of everything."

Homeowners, stated Bettilyon, can control their block-wall population by calling on a professional and having a spray done every two months or so, depending on the state of the back yard.

The need for a pesticide spray may also depend on the time of year.

"Some homeowners don't do treatments in the winter, and that's why you get the explosion of bugs in the spring," Bettilyon said. "It's like some people have the misconception that there are no bugs around in the winter. Most of the population understands, but with a lot of people, the bugs are `out of sight, out of mind' during the winter.

"For example, cockroaches haven't died in the winter, they've just stopped moving around."

Bettilyon mentioned that fire ants and harvester ants can also tiptoe their way into block walls, but that Argentine ants reign supreme in driving some homeowners up the wall while they're in the wall.

The longtime exterminator recalled one extreme case which he likened to a scene from the film "The Mummy," in which he found a block wall with bugs "pouring out" of one hole in it after he performed his spray.

Most other cases he finds are less visually cinematic, and can be quite routine, if dealt with on a regular basis.

"With a block wall in the back yard, there's no class structure to infestations. They just find anywhere they can hide," Bettilyon said. "It doesn't matter whether it's an affluent home or not.

"Even though this is the desert, the bugs have been here a lot longer and they'll probably be here long after we're gone."

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