Hear from Our Customers
When mosquitoes own your shoreline from May through October, you stop using the yard you paid for. That’s the real cost of untreated pest pressure in Seven Harbors — not just the bites, but the lost evenings, the cancelled gatherings, the kids driven inside before sunset. Effective mosquito and tick control gives you that time back, and in Seven Harbors, that time is the whole point.
The moisture that comes with living near Duck Lake and White Lake doesn’t just attract people — it attracts carpenter ants and termites year-round. Older lakefront homes with crawl spaces, wooded lots, and dock structures give those pests exactly what they need. Catching that pressure early means you’re protecting your home’s structure, not just its comfort.
Rodents follow the cold. When fall hits Highland Township, mice start looking for warmth, and lake community homes — with their detached garages, seasonal storage, and multiple entry points — are easy targets. A consistent pest control program means you’re not discovering the problem in January. You’re already ahead of it.
We founded First Choice Pest Control on May 31, 2005 — which means we’ve been through 20 Michigan springs, 20 summers of lake-country mosquito pressure, and 20 falls of rodents pushing indoors across Oakland County. Roger, who leads the company, has 26 years of hands-on experience in Michigan pest control. That’s not a credential on a wall — that’s two and a half decades of knowing how pests behave in wooded, water-adjacent environments like Seven Harbors.
What actually separates us from the regional chains serving this area isn’t a slogan. It’s the fact that you get the same trained technician every visit — someone who learns your property, your lake exposure, and what’s worked before. No rotating strangers, no part-time seasonal workers learning the trade on your dime.
We’re BBB accredited, Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor award recipients, and IPM-certified — and we offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders, because this community has earned it.
It starts with a real assessment — not a generic checklist, but an actual look at your property. In Seven Harbors, that means accounting for your proximity to Duck Lake or White Lake, whether you have wooded margins, shared out-lots through the community association, or seasonal structures like boat storage and detached garages. The pest pressure here isn’t the same as a landlocked subdivision, and your treatment plan shouldn’t be either.
From there, we build a program around what’s actually present and what’s most likely to show up given your specific conditions and the time of year. Michigan’s pest seasons are compressed and predictable — carpenter ants in spring, mosquitoes and ticks through summer, rodents in fall. If you’re on a recurring program, we’re already treating for the next season before it becomes your problem.
All of our technicians are certified under Michigan’s MDARD requirements, and our approach follows Integrated Pest Management principles — which means we use the least invasive effective treatment first. Near a lake, that matters. We’re not going to blanket your shoreline with chemicals when a targeted application does the job. You get results that protect your home without compromising the environment you chose to live beside.
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Seven Harbors residents deal with a specific combination of pests that comes directly from the environment — and our pest control services are built around that reality. Mosquito control is a core part of what we do here, and it includes flea and tick treatment at no extra charge. If you’re using the Highland State Recreation Area trails on M-59, walking the wooded out-lots along Duck Lake Road, or just letting your dog into the yard, tick exposure is real. You shouldn’t have to pay separately to cover it.
For bed bug concerns, we offer certified canine detection — one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States with this service. Detection dogs find infestations with 95 to 98 percent accuracy, compared to about 50 percent for visual inspections alone. In a community where people travel, host guests, and move in and out seasonally, that level of certainty matters.
We also handle carpenter ants, termites, rodents, wasps, hornets, and wildlife pressure — all of which are documented issues in Seven Harbors specifically. Our programs cover both residential and commercial properties, and we match reasonable competitors’ rates. If EcoShield or Proof has given you a quote for service in the Highland Township area, bring it to us.
The short answer is standing water — and in Seven Harbors, there’s a lot of it. Mosquitoes need water to breed, and the combination of lake margins, shoreline vegetation, drainage ditches, man-made canals, and low-lying areas around Duck Lake and White Lake creates a near-constant breeding environment from May through October. Michigan has approximately 40 mosquito species, and a lake community like Seven Harbors sustains active populations throughout the entire warm season — not just during a few peak weeks.
What makes it worse is the surrounding wooded environment. The tree canopy and vegetation along Duck Lake Road and the adjacent Highland State Recreation Area hold moisture and provide resting habitat for adult mosquitoes during the day. That means even if you treat your yard, pressure from surrounding areas continues to push in. A recurring mosquito control program that targets breeding sites — not just adult populations — is the only approach that actually holds through the season.
The signs overlap more than most people realize, which is why this question comes up so often. Both carpenter ants and termites are attracted to moist or damaged wood — and lakefront homes in Seven Harbors, with their proximity to Duck Lake and White Lake, older construction, crawl spaces, and dock structures, give both pests exactly what they need. If you’re seeing small piles of sawdust-like material near wood surfaces, that’s usually carpenter ants. If you’re seeing mud tubes along your foundation or walls, that’s typically termites.
The problem is that both can cause significant structural damage before the signs become obvious. Carpenter ants don’t eat wood — they hollow it out to nest, which weakens the structure over time. Termites consume it directly. Either way, the longer you wait, the more expensive the repair. If you’re in a wooded, water-adjacent property and you’re seeing any of these signs in spring or summer, it’s worth having a professional assess it before the damage compounds.
This is one of the most common questions we get from Seven Harbors residents, and it’s a fair one. Living adjacent to Duck Lake and White Lake — and using shared out-lots and waterways through the Beaumont’s Seven Harbors White and Duck Lake Association — means that treatment choices have to be made carefully. The short answer is yes, professional pest control can be applied safely near water, but it requires a trained technician who understands both the products and the environment.
Our approach follows Integrated Pest Management principles, which means we assess the specific pest pressure first and apply the least invasive effective treatment. Near water, that often means targeted applications rather than broad chemical coverage — treating specific breeding sites, entry points, and activity zones rather than blanketing an area. All of our technicians are certified through Michigan’s MDARD, which requires demonstrated knowledge of product application near sensitive environments. If your property borders the lake or includes shared association land, we account for that in how we treat — not as an afterthought, but as a core part of the assessment.
Most years in Highland Township, meaningful mosquito activity begins in late April or early May, depending on how warm the spring runs. By the time you’re noticing mosquitoes in your yard, breeding populations are already established — which means starting treatment after you see the problem puts you a step behind from the beginning. The more effective approach is to begin your program in early spring, before peak breeding season, so the first treatments are targeting larvae and early-season adults rather than a fully active population.
For Seven Harbors specifically, the proximity to Duck Lake and White Lake means pressure builds faster than it does in landlocked neighborhoods. The lake environment accelerates the breeding cycle and sustains it longer into fall. If you want to actually use your yard through the summer — evenings on the dock, outdoor gatherings, kids playing until dark — starting in April or early May gives you the best chance of staying ahead of the season instead of spending it reacting to it.
Yes — flea and tick treatment is included in the mosquito program at no extra charge. Most pest control companies charge separately for tick control, but we include it because in a community like Seven Harbors, the two problems are inseparable. The same wooded, water-adjacent environment that drives mosquito pressure is also prime tick habitat. If you or your family are using the Highland State Recreation Area trails on M-59, walking the wooded margins of Duck Lake Road, or just spending time in a yard that backs up to the tree line, tick exposure is a real and consistent risk.
Ticks in Oakland County carry Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. The fact that tick treatment is bundled into the mosquito program means you’re covered for both without having to manage two separate service agreements or budgets. One program, one technician who knows your property, and protection that covers the full range of what lake country living actually exposes you to.
We offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders. Highland Township has a strong community character — the kind of place where people stay for decades and take care of each other. Seniors on fixed incomes, veterans who’ve settled in Oakland County after their service, and first responders who work in and around the Highland area shouldn’t have to choose between quality pest control and cost. The discount is our way of making sure that’s not a choice they have to make.
We also offer price matching for reasonable competitors’ rates. If you’ve gotten a quote from another pest control company serving the Seven Harbors or Highland Township area, we’ll work with you on the rate. The goal is straightforward — you should be able to get a 20-year Michigan pest control company, a named and experienced technician, and a program built for lake community conditions without paying a premium just because we’re the better option.
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