Flies in Maryland & Other Summer Pests

Last updated: 5/6/2021
Estimated read time: 3 minutes

Summer is the best season to enjoy the great outdoors, but it’s also the time when you and your family are at the greatest risk of bites, stings, and the vector-borne disease that common summer pests can carry. Flies, mosquitoes, and ticks are three of the top summer pests to look out for.

House Flies

House flies, or scientifically known as muse domestic, are known to be very good scavengers of all things not clean; the common housefly is most certainly despised by everyone. Known as “filth flies” the fly can carry an interesting array of very nasty diseases.

Here are some diseases carried by house flies in Maryland:

• Conjunctivitis
• Polio
• Typhoid fever
• Tuberculosis
• Anthrax
• Leprosy
• Cholera
• Diarrhea
• Dysentery

This list doesn’t even include the diseases transmitted to livestock! Have you ever seen a neighbor walking their pet and allowing the dog to defecate on a grassy plot and then KEEP ON WALKING? Well I have and every time I see this occur I do stop and say: Please clean up! And then add, would you like a bag to clean up with? Just because a person thinks that pet poop is harmless is never reason to continue the practice.

Does Pet Poop Lead to Dangerous Flies?

Flies deposit eggs on pet poop! Why? Because the poop is a food source for maggots! Pet poop is not only a source of food: garbage and dead animals are right there also.

Each female fly (average life 4 weeks) will deposit 75-100 tiny white eggs in a batch with about five to six batches in 3-4 weeks! Good thing that all of the flies do not survive! As the eggs develop they will need a food source. Within 7-7 ½ hours in warm weather (99 degrees +) the eggs will become brown in color and pupate into maggots. The maggots will feed upon what ever surface they have been deposited. Where is the danger? The maggot, upon transformation into a fly, must eat to survive.

House flies do not bite. To eat, the fly must have a moist surface to feed. If the surface is not moist, the fly regurgitates upon your body and sucks up the resulting product all the while excreting fecal matter upon you. It is the excrement you must be cautious of. If you have an open wound, scratch or a deeper cut then the scratch or cut becomes food for the fly. All the fly need do is to regurgitate on the wound (to make the food source liquid) then suck the result for food. No problem: but the fly also is excreting onto you skin.

Go back to the list of diseases, think about the list, and think about your children. Now, do you want pet poop not cleaned up so it can lead to flies?

Mosquitoes & Ticks

Mosquito and tick-borne illness is anticipated to be more of a threat than ever this year, and exposure to mosquitoes and ticks could put your family at risk of the following diseases:

• Lyme Disease
• West Nile Virus
• Yellow Fever
• Zika Virus
• And more!

If you’ve spent previous summers swatting at mosquitoes or checking for ticks, you know how much of a pain these pests can be. Did you know that there are steps you can take to make your backyard less attractive to these pests?

We’ve packaged everything you need to know into the infographic below, so you know what to do to protect your family from pest threats this summer.