Hear from Our Customers
When field mice stop finding their way in every fall, you stop waking up to chewed wires, droppings in the pantry, and that low-grade anxiety that comes with knowing something is living in your walls. That shift — from reactive to protected — is what professional pest control in Burnt, MI is supposed to deliver.
Burns Township sits at the edge of agricultural land, and that geography matters. When crops are harvested and temperatures drop, rodents lose their outdoor food source and your home becomes the next best option. Older rural homes with crawl spaces, aging foundations, and utility gaps give them plenty of ways in. A pest control program built for this environment closes those doors before the problem starts.
The same applies to mosquitoes. The drainage patterns around the Shiawassee River corridor create standing water conditions that keep mosquito pressure high through the entire warm season. When that’s handled properly, your yard is actually usable again — for your kids, your pets, and anyone else who wants to be outside without getting eaten alive.
We founded First Choice Pest Control on May 31, 2005 — which means this year marks 20 years of serving Mid-Michigan homeowners, including families throughout Burnt and the surrounding Burns Township area. Roger, who leads the company, brings 26 years of hands-on pest control experience to every job. That’s not a number pulled from a brochure — it’s the kind of depth that shows up when a technician walks your property and immediately knows what they’re looking at.
This is a family-owned operation, and it runs like one. You get the same technician assigned to your home year after year — someone who learns your property, knows where the pressure points are, and doesn’t need to start from scratch every visit. Every technician is a trained professional. No seasonal hires, no part-time college students rotating through your home.
We hold Integrated Pest Management certification, are accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and have earned awards from both Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor. The work backs it up.
It starts with a real assessment of your property — not a five-minute walkthrough, but an actual look at what’s going on. In Burnt and the surrounding Burns Township area, that means paying attention to things like foundation gaps, crawl space conditions, proximity to tree lines, and any outbuildings or woodpiles that create pest habitat. The pest pressures on a rural Shiawassee County property are different from what you’d find in a subdivision, and the assessment reflects that.
From there, a personalized pest control program is built around what your property actually needs. We use an Integrated Pest Management approach, which means the least invasive, most targeted treatment available for each situation. Products are applied where they’re needed — not broadcast across every surface regardless of what’s actually happening. That matters when you have kids, pets, or both.
After the initial treatment, you’re not handed off to whoever’s available. Your assigned technician follows up, tracks what’s working, and adjusts if anything changes. Michigan’s pest cycle is seasonal — carpenter ants in spring, mosquitoes and wasps through summer, rodents pushing in during fall — and your program accounts for all of it, not just the pest that brought you in the door.
Ready to get started?
We handle the full range of pest control for home and commercial properties in Burnt, MI — rodents, carpenter ants, mosquitoes, wasps, bed bugs, fleas, ticks, and more. The service isn’t a one-size package applied the same way to every property. It’s built around what’s actually present and what the conditions on your specific lot are likely to produce next.
One thing worth knowing: our mosquito control program includes flea and tick treatment at no extra charge. Most companies bill those separately. For families in Burnt with pets and kids using the yard, that bundled coverage matters — because fleas and ticks are a real and growing concern in rural Michigan, especially on wooded lots near agricultural land.
We’re also one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States offering certified canine bed bug detection, with trained dogs reaching 95–98% accuracy compared to roughly 50% for visual inspections alone. Michigan ranks second in the nation for bed bug infestations, and that risk doesn’t skip rural communities. If you’re dealing with a suspected infestation — or want confirmation that you’re not — that level of detection accuracy is hard to match anywhere in Shiawassee County. Discounts are available for seniors, veterans, and first responders, and we’ll match reasonable competitors’ rates.
The short answer is geography. Burns Township sits in an agricultural landscape where properties border farm fields, tree lines, and drainage areas connected to the Shiawassee River corridor. That combination creates conditions that urban and suburban homeowners simply don’t face at the same level.
When crops are harvested each fall, field mice and other rodents lose their primary food and shelter source outdoors. Your home — especially if it has a crawl space, aging foundation, or utility penetrations — becomes the next logical destination. Wooded lots and mature trees also create prime habitat for carpenter ants, which don’t just annoy — they excavate wood and can cause real structural damage over time in older rural homes around Burnt. Add in the standing water that agricultural drainage produces, and mosquito pressure through the warm months stays consistently high. A pest control program designed for Burns Township accounts for all of this, not just the most obvious symptom.
Carpenter ants are one of the most underestimated pest problems in rural Mid-Michigan — and one of the most damaging if left alone. Unlike termites, they don’t eat wood. They excavate it to build their nests, which means they hollow out the structural wood in your walls, floors, and framing over time. By the time you see visible damage, the infestation has usually been active for a while.
Signs to look for include large black ants — often a half-inch or longer — appearing inside your home, especially in spring. You might also find small piles of coarse sawdust near baseboards, window frames, or door frames. If you’re hearing faint rustling sounds inside walls, that’s worth taking seriously. Carpenter ant control was the fastest-growing pest control category nationally in 2024, and the reason is that homeowners are finally understanding what these ants actually do to a structure. On a rural Burns Township property with mature trees and older wood construction, the risk is real and worth addressing early.
This is one of the most common questions we hear, and it’s the right one to ask. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on who’s doing the work and how they’re doing it. We use an Integrated Pest Management approach, which means the goal is always to use the least invasive, most targeted treatment available for the specific pest situation — not to apply chemicals broadly and call it done.
Products are selected based on what’s actually needed, applied only where they’re needed, and chosen with safety in mind for households with children and animals. With 40% of Burns Township households having kids under 18, and with most rural homeowners also having pets, this isn’t an afterthought in how treatments are planned. Before any treatment, your technician will walk you through what’s being applied, where, and what — if any — precautions make sense for your household. You won’t be left guessing.
A standard visual inspection for bed bugs relies on a technician’s eyes — checking mattress seams, box springs, furniture, and baseboards for signs of activity. The problem is that bed bugs are small, fast, and excellent at hiding in places a human inspector can’t easily access. Research puts the accuracy of visual inspections at around 50%, which means there’s a real chance an infestation gets missed entirely.
Certified detection dogs work differently. They’re trained to identify the specific scent of live bed bugs and viable eggs, and they can work through a room far faster and more thoroughly than any visual inspection. We’re one of fewer than 100 companies in the country with this certification, and the dogs reach 95–98% detection accuracy. Michigan ranks second in the nation for bed bug infestations — and that ranking applies to rural Shiawassee County just as much as it does to Flint or Detroit. Bed bugs travel with people and belongings, not just population density. If you want a real answer about whether they’re in your home, canine detection gives you one.
There isn’t one single worst season — it shifts depending on the pest. Spring is when carpenter ants become most active as temperatures rise, and it’s also when stinging insects start establishing new nests in outbuildings, woodpiles, and eaves. Summer brings peak mosquito pressure, especially in low-lying areas near agricultural drainage, along with wasps, hornets, fleas, and ticks reaching their highest activity levels.
Fall is arguably the highest-urgency season for rural properties in Burnt and Burns Township specifically. As crops are harvested from surrounding fields and overnight temperatures drop, mice and rats move indoors. They can enter through a gap smaller than a dime, and rural homes with aging foundations and crawl spaces give them plenty of options. A proactive rodent prevention treatment before late September makes a significant difference in whether you spend the winter dealing with an infestation or not. Bed bugs are year-round regardless of season — they don’t respond to temperature the way outdoor pests do.
Yes. We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders — and that’s a straightforward reflection of who we serve and what we value. Burns Township and the broader Shiawassee County area have a strong tradition of military service and community involvement, and those discounts are a direct acknowledgment of that.
Beyond those specific groups, we also match reasonable competitors’ rates. If you’ve received a quote from another licensed pest control provider serving the Burnt area and it’s lower, bring it. The goal is to earn your business on the merits of the work — not to win by default because you didn’t shop around. The combination of a fair price, a consistent technician who knows your property, and a service guarantee is what makes the value clear. You’re not just paying for a single treatment — you’re paying for a pest control program that actually holds up over time.
Local Resources
Useful Links
