Pest Control in Graniteville, Staten Island
Graniteville lies in the northwestern interior of Staten Island, where Forest Avenue and Richmond Avenue meet just north of the Staten Island Expressway. It is a busy crossroads area with shopping centers, auto shops and fast-food restaurants lining the main roads, while the side streets are filled with semi-attached and attached houses, many built during the building boom that followed the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. Pockets of woods and wetland survive, including Graniteville Quarry Park and the Graniteville Swamp. The neighborhood's central location makes it popular with families who commute by car to New Jersey or across the island.
About Graniteville
The neighborhood's name comes from a quarry that operated here in the nineteenth century, cutting a hard, dark rock that locals called granite, though it was actually diabase trap rock. Stone from the quarry was used for paving and construction around the region. For most of its history the area was sparsely settled, but after the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964, developers filled open land with rows of new homes and commercial strips.
Common Pest Problems in Graniteville
Graniteville's retail corridors along Forest and Richmond avenues, with their fast-food outlets, supermarkets and dumpsters, give rats plenty to eat, and the rodents spread into nearby residential blocks. Many of the attached and semi-attached homes share walls and foundations, so mice can move easily from one house to the next once they get inside. German cockroaches show up in some garden apartments and in homes that border busy commercial properties.
The neighborhood's remaining wetlands and wooded patches, including the swamp and the old quarry site, provide habitat for raccoons and skunks that roam into yards at night. Skunks dig for grubs in lawns and den beneath decks and concrete stoops, and they can spray pets that surprise them after dark. Wood-framed attached houses are also vulnerable to subterranean termites, especially where wooden decks sit directly on soil or where downspouts keep ground wet against the foundation.