Hear from Our Customers
Living near Lobdell Lake is the whole point. The 545 acres of water, the shoreline, the wooded lot — that’s what you paid for. But that same environment that makes Argentine worth living in also makes it one of the more pest-pressured communities in Genesee County. Standing water breeds mosquitoes fast. Mature oaks attract carpenter ants. Older ranch homes with crawl spaces give rodents exactly the kind of entry point they’re looking for come fall.
When pest control is handled right, you stop thinking about it. The deck becomes usable again. The kids and the dog can run the yard without you worrying about ticks. You’re not finding mouse droppings in the pole barn or carpenter ant trails along the windowsills. The problem just goes away — and stays gone.
That’s what a real pest control program looks like for an Argentine homeowner. Not a one-time spray and a handshake. A plan built around your property, your season, and the specific conditions that come with lake-adjacent living in Michigan.
We’ve been operating in Genesee County since May 31, 2005 — that’s two decades of showing up for homeowners across the county, including right here in Argentine Township. Roger, who leads the company, brings 26 years of hands-on pest control experience to every job. This isn’t a franchise. There’s no rotating crew of seasonal hires. When you call First Choice, you get trained professionals who treat pest control as a career — not a summer gig.
We’re family-owned, award-recognized through Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, and accredited by the Better Business Bureau. We’re also one of fewer than 100 pest control companies in the entire United States offering certified canine bed bug detection. That’s not a small thing.
For Argentine residents — whether you’re on the Lobdell Lake shoreline, along Silver Lake Road, or on a larger parcel toward the Livingston County line — we know this area. We’ve been serving it long enough to understand exactly what lake-adjacent, wooded, older-home living does to pest pressure throughout the year.
It starts with a real assessment of your property — not a clipboard checklist, but an actual look at what’s going on. Argentine homes vary a lot. A ranch on acreage with a pole barn near the Shiawassee River corridor has completely different vulnerabilities than a newer build off Silver Lake Road. Our technician looks at your structure, your entry points, your yard, and what’s already happening before anything gets applied.
From there, we build a program around your specific situation. We’re trained in Integrated Pest Management — which means the approach starts with the least invasive treatment that will actually work. That matters when you’re living near a lake. Nobody wants broad chemical applications running off toward Lobdell Lake or Bennett Lake. IPM keeps it targeted, effective, and responsible.
Once treatment begins, you keep the same technician. Not a different face every visit — the same person who knows your property, remembers what they found last time, and can spot a change before it becomes a bigger problem. That consistency is built into how we operate, and it’s one of the reasons customers stay with us year after year.
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We handle the full range of pest issues that come with living in Argentine Township. Mosquito control is a big one — and our program includes flea and tick treatment at no extra charge. If you have a yard that backs up to the water or wooded shoreline, that bundled coverage isn’t a bonus, it’s a necessity. Ticks don’t stop at the property line, and neither does our program.
Beyond mosquitoes and ticks, the service covers ants (including carpenter ants, which thrive in Argentine’s mature-tree, moisture-exposed properties), rodents, stinging insects, bed bugs, spiders, and more. For homeowners with older structures — pre-2000 ranch homes, cottages, properties with crawl spaces — rodent exclusion and carpenter ant treatment are often the most urgent needs heading into fall and winter. We address both.
Canine bed bug detection is available for homeowners who want certainty — especially relevant for Argentine properties that host seasonal guests or function as lake rentals. The dogs detect infestations at 95–98% accuracy, compared to roughly 50% for a standard visual inspection. Residential and commercial pest control services are both available, and we match our pricing against reasonable competitors’ rates. Discounts are offered for seniors, veterans, and first responders — because a lot of Argentine’s established homeowner community falls into exactly those categories.
This is one of the most common concerns from Argentine homeowners, and it’s a fair one. When you’re living on or near a connected lake system — Lobdell, Bennett, Hoisington — the last thing you want is a pest control company applying broad-coverage chemicals that can run off into the water. We’re trained in Integrated Pest Management, which is the EPA-recognized approach that uses targeted, least-invasive treatments first. That means applications go where the problem is, not everywhere at once.
For mosquito control specifically, the treatments we use near waterfront properties are selected with aquatic environments in mind. The goal is effective pest reduction without compromising the lake ecosystem that makes your Argentine property worth protecting in the first place. If you have specific concerns about a product being used near your dock or shoreline, ask — and you’ll get a straight answer about what’s being applied and why.
It comes down to water. The Argentine CDP has an unusually high proportion of water coverage — Lobdell Lake alone is 545 acres, and when you add Bennett Lake, Hoisington Lake, Murray Lake, and the Shiawassee River corridor along the northern edge of the community, you’re talking about a landscape that’s essentially surrounded by mosquito breeding habitat. Mosquitoes lay eggs in standing and slow-moving water, and shoreline vegetation gives larvae exactly the shelter they need to develop.
Add Michigan summers — temperatures regularly hitting the 80s with high humidity — and the lake-surface evaporation that keeps shoreline areas consistently moist, and Argentine ends up with more sustained mosquito pressure than inland communities of similar size. A property in Grand Blanc or Fenton doesn’t have the same water exposure. That’s why a real mosquito control program matters more here, and why our program — which also includes flea and tick treatment — is built for this kind of environment, not a one-size-fits-all suburban yard.
The size difference is usually the first clue. Carpenter ants are noticeably larger than common pavement or odorous house ants — typically a quarter-inch to a half-inch long, sometimes more. They’re often black or a mix of black and red. But the bigger indicator is where you’re finding them. If you’re seeing large ants near windowsills, door frames, or anywhere there’s wood that’s been exposed to moisture, that’s a red flag worth taking seriously.
For Argentine homeowners, this matters more than it might in a newer subdivision. Older ranch homes with crawl spaces, properties with mature oaks in the yard, and any structure with wood that’s been exposed to the moisture that comes with lake-adjacent living are all at elevated risk. Carpenter ants don’t eat wood the way termites do — they excavate it to nest, and the damage builds quietly over time. By the time you’re seeing large numbers of them indoors, there’s usually already a colony established somewhere in the structure. Getting a professional assessment early is almost always less expensive than waiting.
Our mosquito control program runs through the active season — typically from late spring through early fall, which in Michigan means roughly May through September when temperatures are consistently warm enough for mosquito activity. Treatments are applied on a recurring schedule, not just once and done, because mosquito populations replenish throughout the season.
What makes the program stand out for Argentine homeowners specifically is what’s included at no extra charge: flea and tick treatment. If you have a dog that runs the shoreline, kids who play in a wooded yard, or a property that backs up to any of the water bodies in the township, flea and tick exposure is a real concern — not a hypothetical one. Most pest control companies charge separately for that coverage. We include it in the mosquito program because it makes sense to treat the whole outdoor environment, not just the mosquitoes you can see.
Yes, and honestly, older homes with crawl spaces are one of the most common situations we deal with in this area. Argentine has a significant stock of pre-2000 ranch-style homes — properties with aging foundations, older window and door seals, and crawl spaces that create exactly the kind of dark, moisture-exposed environment that rodents, spiders, and other pests are drawn to, especially as temperatures drop in the fall.
The assessment process for these properties is more thorough than a standard inspection, because the entry points aren’t always obvious. Gaps in the foundation, deteriorating door seals, utility penetrations — these are the things our trained technician looks for when treating an older home. The program gets built around what’s actually found, not a generic package. And because we keep the same technician on your property year over year, we build up real knowledge of your specific home — where the vulnerabilities are, what’s been treated before, and what to watch for next season.
Yes. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders. Argentine Township has a significant population of established, long-term homeowners — many of whom fall into one or more of those categories — and the discounts are a straightforward acknowledgment of that. There’s no complicated enrollment process. When you call to schedule, just mention that you qualify and it gets applied.
It’s also worth knowing that we match reasonable competitors’ rates, so if you’ve gotten a quote from another pest control company serving the Argentine area, bring it up. The goal is to make sure cost isn’t the reason someone ends up with a less experienced provider. Between the price matching and the available discounts, most Argentine homeowners find that getting the most credentialed, locally-rooted pest control option in Genesee County doesn’t require paying a premium over what’s already out there.
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