Hear from Our Customers
Living on a wooded lot in Jossman Acres means you’re sharing your property line with deer mice, carpenter ants, and mosquitoes whether you invited them or not. The mature tree canopy that makes this community beautiful is also exactly what carpenter ant colonies look for when they’re building satellite nests inside structural framing. For homes averaging over $517,000 in value, that’s not a small problem — it’s a structural and financial risk that gets more expensive the longer it goes unaddressed.
When pest control is done right, you stop reacting and start preventing. Your basement stops being a revolving door for rodents every October. Your backyard becomes usable again from May through September without mosquitoes and ticks cutting the evening short. Your home stays your home — not a shared space with whatever moved in from the tree line.
The wooded, rural character of Springfield Township also means tick pressure is real and consistent. Black-legged ticks carrying Lyme disease are endemic to exactly this kind of environment — large lots, deer activity, wooded margins. Getting that under control isn’t just about comfort. It’s about the health of your family and your pets every time they step outside.
We founded First Choice Pest Control on May 31, 2005 — which means 2025 marks 20 years of protecting Michigan homes. We’re a family-owned business, led by Roger, who has 26 years of hands-on pest control experience in Michigan’s specific climate and landscape. That’s not a corporate bio — that’s someone who has spent more than two decades learning exactly how pests behave in Oakland County’s wooded, four-season environment.
We serve residential and commercial customers across southeast Michigan, including Jossman Acres and the broader Springfield Township area. We hold MDARD Pesticide Application Business License #250081, carry Integrated Pest Management training, and have earned recognition from both Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders — because this community deserves that.
What sets us apart isn’t a slogan. It’s the fact that you get the same technician every visit, every year. Someone who knows your property, knows your history, and doesn’t need a refresher every time they show up.
It starts with a thorough inspection of your property — inside and out. For Jossman Acres homes, that means looking at the places that matter most in this environment: foundation gaps where deer mice enter in fall, structural wood near mature trees where carpenter ants establish satellite colonies, standing water in low-lying wooded areas that feeds mosquito breeding from May through September, and eaves or outbuildings where stinging insects nest through summer. The inspection isn’t a formality — it’s the foundation of everything that follows.
From there, our technician builds a treatment plan specific to your property. Not a package pulled off a shelf, but an actual program based on what’s happening at your address. That might mean a targeted carpenter ant treatment along the north foundation, a seasonal mosquito barrier that includes flea and tick control at no extra charge, or a rodent exclusion plan before the first cold snap hits in October. The plan is yours — not a copy of what we did at the house down the street.
After treatment, you’ll know what was done, why it was done, and what to watch for. And because the same technician stays with your account year after year, the follow-up visits aren’t starting from scratch — they’re building on what they already know about your home.
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We handle the full range of pest pressure that Jossman Acres homeowners actually deal with: general pest control, rodent control, carpenter ant treatment, mosquito control, stinging insect removal, flea and tick treatment, mole control, bed bug extermination, and wildlife and nuisance animal control. That’s not a list for a brochure — it’s a reflection of what comes with owning a wooded, acreage-style property in Springfield Township.
One service worth knowing about: we’re one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States offering certified canine K-9 bed bug detection. That level of accuracy — 95 to 98 percent — means a single bug or viable egg hidden in a wall void or inside furniture gets found. For families in Jossman Acres who travel regularly, that capability isn’t a novelty. It’s the difference between catching a problem early and dealing with a full infestation in a half-million-dollar home.
Our mosquito program includes flea and tick treatment at no additional charge — which matters in a community where tick exposure is a genuine health concern every time your kids or pets are in the yard. We also offer price matching for reasonable competitor rates, so you’re not choosing between quality and cost. If you find a lower price from a legitimate provider, bring it to us.
The wooded, rural character of Jossman Acres creates elevated pressure from several pest categories that suburban homeowners don’t deal with at the same level. Carpenter ants are one of the most consistent threats — the mature trees on larger Springfield Township lots provide ideal conditions for colonies to establish satellite nests inside structural wood, particularly in homes built between the 1970s and 1990s. Rodents are another major issue, especially in fall when deer mice and house mice follow the tree line toward the warmth of your home’s foundation.
Mosquitoes and ticks are a genuine seasonal health concern, not just a nuisance. Black-legged ticks carrying Lyme disease are endemic to wooded Oakland County properties with active deer movement, which describes most of Jossman Acres. Yellow jackets and hornets nest in ground-level sites on wooded lots and in the eaves of larger homes. Stink bugs and boxelder bugs invade in large numbers in fall, seeking wall voids for overwintering. If you’re on an acreage-style lot near the Clinton River watershed, you’re dealing with all of the above at some point across the year.
This is one of the most common questions homeowners in wooded areas like Jossman Acres ask — and it matters, because the treatment is completely different. The clearest visual difference is the ant itself: carpenter ants are large, black or dark brown, and you’ll often see them foraging on their own or in small groups, especially near wood. Termites are smaller, lighter in color, and rarely seen in the open — you’re more likely to find discarded wings or mud tubes along your foundation.
The other thing to look for is the damage itself. Carpenter ants excavate smooth, clean galleries through wood — they don’t eat it, they hollow it out. You might find sawdust-like frass near baseboards or windowsills. Termite damage tends to look more packed and muddy. In Jossman Acres specifically, carpenter ants are far more common than termites given the wooded environment and the prevalence of homes with mature tree stumps or wood-to-soil contact near the foundation. Either way, a professional inspection is the only reliable way to confirm which you’re dealing with and what to do about it.
Yes — but it depends heavily on the approach and the timing. Barrier spray treatments applied to the perimeter of your property, foliage, and known resting sites reduce active mosquito populations significantly during the treatment window. For wooded Jossman Acres lots with low-lying areas, standing water, and proximity to the Clinton River watershed, source reduction matters just as much as the spray itself. That means addressing where mosquitoes are actually breeding — not just where they’re resting.
Our program includes flea and tick treatment at no extra charge, which is particularly relevant in this area. You’re not just reducing mosquitoes — you’re reducing the tick exposure risk every time your family or pets are in the yard. Treatments typically begin in late spring and run through early fall, covering the full high-pressure window for Oakland County. If you have a heavily wooded property, you may need more frequent applications than a typical suburban lot — our technician will assess that during the initial inspection and build the schedule accordingly.
Rodent control in older homes — and most of Jossman Acres’s housing stock was built between 1970 and 1999 — is a two-part job. The first part is eliminating the current population through targeted baiting and trapping. The second part, and the one most companies skip, is exclusion: finding and sealing the entry points that let rodents in to begin with. On a property with a wooded lot margin, that means inspecting foundation gaps, utility penetrations, garage door seals, and any wood-to-soil contact that gives mice a foothold.
Deer mice are the primary concern in rural Springfield Township — they’re the species most associated with hantavirus and with carrying the ticks that spread Lyme disease. They’re also more difficult to exclude than house mice because of their smaller body size. A thorough exclusion inspection on a larger Jossman Acres home takes time, but it’s the only approach that actually solves the problem long-term rather than just reducing the population temporarily. We keep the same technician on your account year after year, which means they’re tracking your property’s history and catching new entry points before they become an infestation.
Canine bed bug detection uses a certified K-9 trained specifically to locate live bed bugs and viable eggs by scent. The accuracy rate is 95 to 98 percent — significantly higher than a standard visual inspection, which can miss a single bug hiding in a wall void, electrical outlet, or inside furniture seams. We’re one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States offering this certification, which means Jossman Acres residents have access to a capability that most markets don’t.
Whether you need it depends on your situation. If you travel frequently — hotel stays, vacation rentals, or college move-ins for families with college-age kids — you have regular bed bug exposure risk. If you’ve had a confirmed or suspected exposure and want to know with certainty whether your home is affected, a canine inspection gives you a definitive answer rather than a best guess. For a home worth over $500,000, the cost of a canine inspection is trivial compared to the cost of treating a full infestation that a visual inspection missed in its early stages.
Yes — we offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders. Springfield Township has a meaningful population of long-term homeowners, retired residents, and the men and women who serve Oakland County’s fire, police, and EMS departments. These discounts reflect the fact that we operate as a genuine community business, not a franchise optimizing for margin.
If you qualify, just mention it when you call. There’s no complicated process or paperwork. The discount applies to your service, and the quality of the work doesn’t change based on what you pay — you get the same licensed technician, the same thorough inspection, and the same workmanship guarantee as every other customer. We also offer price matching for reasonable competitor rates, so between the discount and the match policy, there’s rarely a reason to settle for a less experienced provider just to save money.
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