Pennfield Township lies northeast of the city, and the Battle Creek River threads through it. River bottomland, wetlands, ponds, and every low spot that holds a Michigan rain give mosquitoes a productive season from late spring well into fall. West Nile is a standing state concern, and eastern equine encephalitis, rarer but far more serious, has involved southwest Michigan counties before.
Most of the mosquitoes biting you were not born at the river, though. They came from the gutters, the tarp, the tires, the wheelbarrow, and the low spot behind the garage, within a couple hundred feet of your door. Cutting those breeding sites does more than anything else.
Beyond that it is the standard Michigan rotation: mice off the fields at the first cold snap, carpenter ants in wood softened by a gutter leak, cellar spiders in the basement joists, yellowjackets in the ground and the soffit by late summer, and boxelder bugs and stink bugs massing on sunny walls in October. An experienced local exterminator covers Pennfield.
Around Pennfield
- Battle Creek River
- Bailey Park nearby
- Pennfield Schools
- Capital Avenue NE
- Duck Lake area