One Year In: What Pest Control in West Covina Actually Taught Me
By Tevan Daniels, Founder · Touchdown Pest Control · West Covina, CA
May 18, 2026 · 5 min read
When I started Touchdown Pest Control a year ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. I grew up in the SGV. I’d dealt with ants, spiders, the usual stuff you expect in Southern California. I figured that’s what I’d be dealing with in people’s homes.
I was wrong about a lot of it.
A year of walking through West Covina homes — and into El Monte, Covina, Glendora, Azusa, and the surrounding communities — taught me things I couldn’t have learned any other way. Here are the three biggest.
1. The biggest pest problem in the SGV isn’t what most people expect.
Ask most people in West Covina what pest they’re worried about and they’ll say ants. Maybe spiders. That was my assumption too.
What I actually deal with most? Rodents. Roof rat removal and rodent control make up a bigger share of our calls than anything else — and once you understand this part of Southern California, it makes complete sense.
So much of this area backs right up to hillsides, heavy vegetation, and mountain terrain. That’s perfect habitat for roof rats, Norway rats, and other wildlife. These aren’t random pests that wandered in from nowhere — they’ve been living in those hillsides long before any of us built houses there.
That’s something I’ve actually said to homeowners during pest inspections in West Covina. I’ll be looking at a beautiful home with an incredible view of the hills, and I have to gently explain that the wildlife they can see from their back porch is the same wildlife trying to get into their attic.
My goal isn’t to eliminate rodents from nature — that’s not realistic and it’s not my job. My job is to keep them out of your house. Those are two very different problems, and understanding that difference changes how you approach the solution.
2. That tree giving your home shade? A roof rat sees a ladder.
One of the most common things I find on pest inspections is vegetation touching the structure. Branches grazing the roofline. Shrubs pushed up against the foundation. A vine that’s worked its way up the side of the house.
Homeowners see a mature tree providing shade and a little character. Roof rats see a direct route to the attic.
I had a customer in El Monte who had been dealing with a rodent problem for years. Multiple treatments, multiple companies, nothing stuck. When I did the inspection, I found the main entry point within a few minutes: tree branches were giving roof rats direct roof access. They were just walking across the branches and in through a gap near the eave.
Once the branches were trimmed and the entry point was sealed, the problem stopped.
This is what’s called exclusion — identifying and sealing the access points that pests use to get inside. It’s not glamorous work. It’s measuring gaps, checking door sweeps, looking at where pipes enter the foundation. But it’s often the thing that actually solves the problem long-term when spraying alone hasn’t.
If you haven’t walked the perimeter of your home recently and looked at what’s touching it or what’s close to it — that’s worth doing this weekend.
3. “I only saw one or two” is almost never the whole story.
This is probably the phrase I hear most often from homeowners, and I’ve learned it almost always means more than it sounds.
Pests don’t send scouts ahead. If you’re seeing one or two of something inside your home, there’s almost always a larger population nearby — in a wall void, behind an appliance, in a neighboring unit, somewhere you’re not looking.
The clearest example I saw this year was in Covina. A customer called because they’d spotted a few roaches in the kitchen. Not many — just a few. They weren’t sure it was even worth calling a roach exterminator about.
During the inspection I found out that a neighboring unit had an infestation that had been going unreported for months. The roaches the customer was seeing weren’t residents — they were overflow. The neighboring unit had gotten crowded enough that roaches were migrating out looking for a new place to establish.
This is especially true with roaches in apartments and multi-family housing, but it applies across pest types. A couple of ants on a counter usually means a colony somewhere nearby. A single rodent dropping usually means regular activity in the space.
I’m not saying this to scare anyone. I’m saying it because the homeowners who act quickly when they see something small consistently have smaller, cheaper problems to fix than the ones who wait.
The thing year one actually taught me.
If I had to distill everything from this past year into a single idea, it’s this:
The homes I’ve been able to actually help — not just treat, but actually fix — are the ones where we figured out the why. Why are the rodents getting in? Why are the ants coming back every spring? Why did the roach problem persist through three different treatments?
Usually there’s an answer. A gap, a tree branch, a moisture source, a neighboring unit. Find the why and the how to fix it becomes a lot clearer.
That’s what I’m building Touchdown around as we head into year two. Not just showing up with a sprayer. Showing up with enough curiosity to figure out what’s actually going on.
If you’re in West Covina, El Monte, Covina, Glendora, Azusa, Baldwin Park, or anywhere in the SGV and you’ve been seeing something you can’t explain — give us a call. We offer free pest inspections in West Covina and the surrounding area. That’s exactly what we’re here for.
Need a Pest Inspection?
Contact Touchdown Pest Control today for a free inspection and expert advice tailored to your home’s unique pest challenges.