Augusta lies west of Battle Creek where the Kalamazoo River runs past the Fort Custer Recreation Area, and that geography sets the season. River bottomland, wetlands, and the lakes and ponds nearby keep mosquitoes breeding from late spring into fall, with West Nile a routine Michigan concern and eastern equine encephalitis a rarer but serious one in this part of the state.
The woods are the other half. Blacklegged ticks quest along wooded edges, in tall grass, and in leaf litter, and southwestern Michigan is where their range has expanded most. A mown, sunny lawn holds very few. The shaded edge where a yard meets the tree line holds most of them, so the treatment concentrates there.
Homes in Augusta are older and small-town, which means stone and block basements, mice at the first cold snap, carpenter ants in damp sills, cellar spiders in the joist bays, and the annual October wall-massing of boxelder bugs, stink bugs, and Asian lady beetles. A local exterminator handles the whole rotation.
Around Augusta
- Kalamazoo River
- Fort Custer Recreation Area
- Kellogg Bird Sanctuary nearby
- M-96 corridor
- Augusta Village