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Bed bugs don’t hide in obvious places. They go behind baseboards, inside electrical outlets, deep in furniture joints, and under carpet edges along the walls — spots that a standard visual inspection simply doesn’t reach. When a treatment is based on an incomplete inspection, you don’t get a complete result. You get a temporary one.
That’s the core problem with most bed bug services in the Highland Township area. A technician walks through, checks the mattress seams and box spring, maybe shines a light along the headboard — and calls it done. In a smaller apartment, that might be enough. In the kind of homes that line Duck Lake Road and the surrounding neighborhoods off M-59, with finished basements, multiple guest rooms, and large upholstered furniture throughout, it’s not even close.
What changes after a proper treatment isn’t just the absence of bites. It’s the confidence of knowing the inspection actually found what was there. It’s sleeping without checking the sheets. It’s not wondering whether that one spare bedroom was really cleared. When the detection is thorough and the treatment is built around what was actually found — not just what was visible — you get a result that holds.
First Choice Pest Control was founded on May 31, 2005 — which means this year marks 20 years of serving Southeast Michigan homeowners, including families throughout East Highland, Highland Charter Township, and Oakland County. Roger Chinault, the owner, has 26 years of hands-on pest control experience and still leads the company he built. There’s no corporate layer between you and the person responsible for your result.
We hold Integrated Pest Management training credentials, have earned awards through both Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, and offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders — because a meaningful portion of the families in East Highland have served, and that matters. Every technician is a trained professional. No rotating temps, no part-time fill-ins. You get the same person each time, someone who learns your home and treats it accordingly.
For East Highland residents investing in properties that have seen significant value growth — Highland Charter Township’s median home value reached around $410,000 in 2025 — having a pest control company that is accountable, consistent, and genuinely experienced isn’t optional. It’s the baseline.
It starts with a certified canine inspection. We’re one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States that offers this service. The K-9 team locates live bed bugs and viable eggs with 90–98% accuracy — compared to 17–40% for a standard human visual inspection. In homes throughout East Highland, where larger floor plans and lake-adjacent guest rooms create significantly more potential harborage points than a typical suburban layout, that accuracy gap is the difference between solving the problem and prolonging it.
Once the inspection identifies exactly where activity is present, we build a treatment plan around those specific findings. We don’t apply a one-size approach and move on. The program is built for your home — your room count, your furniture, your layout — and timed to the bed bug lifecycle so that follow-up visits address emerging nymphs before they reach reproductive age. All our applicators are MDARD-licensed, and every product we use meets Michigan’s pesticide application standards.
After treatment, you’ll know what was done, why it was done that way, and what the follow-up schedule looks like. No guesswork, no vague “check back in a few weeks.” If the K-9 team does a clearance inspection and finds nothing, that’s not just an opinion — it’s a documented, high-confidence result you can actually rely on.
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The canine detection inspection is the foundation. Before any treatment is recommended, the K-9 team does a full sweep of the affected areas — or the entire home, depending on what you’re dealing with. This is not a courtesy walk-through. It’s a documented inspection with a level of accuracy that no human-only inspection can replicate, and it’s what allows the treatment plan to be targeted rather than speculative.
Treatment options are determined by what the inspection finds and what your home specifically needs. We serve both residential and commercial customers throughout East Highland and Highland Township, so whether you’re dealing with a primary residence, a lake-adjacent rental property near Duck Lake, or a commercial space along the M-59 corridor, the approach is built around your situation — not a generic package pulled from a menu. There are no binding contracts. If a competitor has given you a reasonable quote, we’ll match it.
For Oakland County homeowners in East Highland, it’s also worth knowing: bed bugs are not a sanitation issue. They’ve been found in high-end hotels, vacation rentals, and well-maintained homes throughout the region. If you’ve traveled recently, used a short-term rental near Alpine Valley, or had guests stay over, your home has had exposure risk. The smart move is a professional inspection — not waiting until the problem is visible enough to confirm on your own.
Certified K-9 detection teams locate live bed bugs and viable eggs with 90–98% accuracy. A standard human visual inspection — where a technician walks through and checks visible surfaces — achieves somewhere between 17% and 40% accuracy. That’s not a knock on the technician; it’s a physical limitation. Bed bugs hide in places no human inspector can access without tearing apart walls or furniture.
In East Highland and the surrounding Highland Township area, where homes tend to be larger, have finished basements, and often include guest rooms that don’t get used every day, the gap between those two accuracy rates has real consequences. A missed colony in a spare bedroom or behind a baseboard in a lower level means the infestation continues — and by the time it’s visible again, it’s grown. The K-9 inspection eliminates that uncertainty before treatment begins, which is why it’s the starting point for every bed bug job we take on.
Yes — completely. Bed bugs are not seasonal pests. They don’t slow down in cold weather the way mosquitoes or stink bugs do, because they live entirely indoors in climate-controlled environments. As long as your home is heated — which in Highland Township means roughly six or more months of sustained indoor living — bed bugs have everything they need to breed year-round.
Michigan’s winters actually create conditions that work in bed bugs’ favor. Residents spend more time indoors, in closer contact with furniture and bedding. There’s more secondhand furniture shopping, more items brought in from storage, and more holiday travel in November and December — all of which are common introduction vectors. If you’re noticing signs of bed bugs in the winter months in East Highland, don’t assume the cold will handle it. It won’t. The infestation will continue at the same pace, and waiting only gives it more time to spread to additional rooms.
The most common introduction point is travel. If you’ve stayed in a hotel along the M-59 corridor heading toward Pontiac or Auburn Hills, used a vacation rental near Duck Lake or White Lake, or had guests who recently traveled, luggage and clothing are the most likely carriers. Bed bugs are exceptional hitchhikers — they move from infested environments into bags, suitcases, and clothing without any visible sign that they’ve done so.
Secondhand furniture is the other major vector, especially in a community where larger homes create demand for furniture that fills them. A used couch, mattress, or upholstered chair from a private seller, estate sale, or thrift store can carry an infestation that isn’t visible at the time of purchase. Seasonal visitors to Alpine Valley and the surrounding lake communities also create transmission pathways that are specific to this area — rental properties and shared accommodations move bed bugs between households in ways that don’t happen in communities without that kind of seasonal foot traffic. If you’re not sure how they got in, that’s normal. What matters more is getting an accurate inspection done before the population grows.
It depends on the treatment method selected and the size of the affected area. For most residential treatments in East Highland — where homes tend to run larger than the regional average — plan for the treatment itself to take several hours, with preparation required beforehand. Our technician will walk you through exactly what needs to be done before the visit: which items to bag, what to launder, how to prep furniture and bedding. Following those prep steps closely directly affects how well the treatment works.
Whether you need to leave depends on the specific products being used. In many cases, residents need to vacate for a period of time after treatment and should not re-enter until the area has been properly ventilated. Your First Choice technician will give you a clear, specific timeline — not a vague window. For families with children or pets, that timing matters, and it will be communicated plainly before the job begins. If you have specific concerns about a medical condition, young children, or animals in the home, raise those before the appointment so the treatment plan can account for them.
One treatment is rarely the complete answer, and any company telling you otherwise is oversimplifying the problem. Bed bug eggs are resistant to most chemical treatments, which means a single application — even a thorough one — won’t eliminate the next generation. Follow-up visits are timed to the bed bug lifecycle specifically to catch emerging nymphs before they reach reproductive age and before the population rebuilds.
For larger homes in East Highland — properties with multiple bedrooms, finished lower levels, and extensive soft furnishings — the follow-up schedule is especially important. More square footage means more potential harborage points, and more harborage points mean a higher risk that a single treatment misses something. The canine clearance inspection at the end of the program isn’t just a formality. It’s the confirmation that the job is actually done — not just that enough time has passed. That’s a meaningful distinction, and it’s one of the reasons the K-9 program exists beyond the initial detection phase.
Yes. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders. Highland Township has a substantial population of families with military backgrounds and a growing number of longtime residents who have lived in this community for decades — people who built their homes here, raised families near Duck Lake and the surrounding neighborhoods, and have every reason to expect straightforward, honest service at a fair price.
The discount isn’t a complicated process. When you call to schedule, mention that you or someone in your household qualifies — whether that’s a veteran, an active first responder, or a senior homeowner — and our team will apply it to your service. We also match reasonable competitor rates, so if you’ve already gotten a quote from another provider in the Oakland County area, bring it up. The goal is to make sure you’re not paying more than you should for a service that actually delivers what it promises.
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