River Banks, Backyard Gardens and Frame Cottages: Bridgeport Pest Control

Rats on the riprap: the South Branch and Bubbly Creek edges

Norway rats are the first and most frequent pest call in Bridgeport, and geography explains it. The South Branch of the Chicago River runs along the north side, its South Fork, known for more than a century as Bubbly Creek, bends down the west side, and rail corridors and the expressway embankment frame much of the rest. Together they form a near-continuous ring of riprap, weedy banks, rail ballast and undisturbed soil where rats can burrow without interruption. From those edges they move inward along alleys at night, following food.

Bubbly Creek earned its name in the packinghouse era, when stockyards waste dumped into the channel decomposed and sent gas bubbling to the surface. The Union Stock Yards closed in 1971 and the creek is far cleaner today, with paddlers launching from a public pier, but its banks still carry overgrown slopes and old industrial edges that rats use as cover. The South Branch banks, rail embankments and the strips beside the Stevenson act the same way.

The blocks closest to these edges see the heaviest pressure, though rats travel several blocks in a night when gardens and carts are productive. Burrows under back stairs, along fences and beside garage slabs, gnawing at the bottom corners of garage doors and dark rub marks along foundations are the standard signs. Spring snowmelt, when burrow openings are exposed, is the easiest time to survey a yard.

Gardens, fig trees and garages: the backyard side of the rat problem

Bridgeport's backyards make the river rats' job easier. Generations of Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, Mexican and Chinese families have kept vegetable gardens, fruit trees, grapevines and compost piles behind narrow houses, and many families still do. Older garages along the alleys often have wood floors, crumbling slab edges or gaps under the doors. Put those together and you have food, water and shelter on every lot, which lets a colony settle in for good rather than visiting.

Licensed exterminators here usually work the alley line first: locked bait stations along fences and garage walls, active burrows treated and collapsed, and garage door bottoms sealed with metal-backed rubber. Because rats use the whole alley, the best results come when several neighbors treat at the same time, and a 311 request for city alley baiting adds crews the private work cannot replace.

Gardeners can make a large difference without giving anything up. Harvest tomatoes, squash and figs as they ripen rather than leaving fallen fruit, use a closed compost bin set on hardware cloth instead of an open pile, keep birdseed and chicken feed in metal bins, and raise woodpiles and stored lumber off the ground. Rats that cannot find easy food in a yard move on to the next one.

Canal laborers, a moving street grade and cottages outside the fire limits

Bridgeport is among Chicago's oldest neighborhoods. Settlers gathered at the river's portage in the early 1830s, the name Bridgeport appears by 1836, and Irish laborers arrived in numbers to dig the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which began at the South Branch. The area grew into a dense grid of workers' homes serving the canal, the river trades, the limestone quarry and later the stockyards to the south. Because much of it lay outside the city's early fire limits, builders kept putting up wood-frame cottages long after brick became mandatory downtown, and many still stand.

Chicago raised its streets several feet over the second half of the 1800s to install sewers, and not every house was jacked up to meet the new grade. On some older blocks, yards and front doors still sit below the sidewalk, and water drains toward those houses. Today the community, home to about 33,600 people, is one of the city's most diverse and majority Asian, but its housing remains rooted in that canal-era grid. Old wood, damp low lots and two waterways set the three themes of pest work here: rodents, moisture insects and wood-destroying insects.

Below-grade basements, centipedes and termites

A house whose yard sits a few feet below the sidewalk collects runoff from the street and its neighbors, and an 1880s foundation of rubble stone or soft brick does little to stop it. Many Bridgeport basements and cottage crawlspaces therefore stay damp from the spring thaw into September. House centipedes, millipedes, silverfish, earwigs and the humpbacked camel crickets that hop when disturbed all follow that humidity. None of them harms people or the building, but together they work as a moisture meter. When their numbers rise, water is getting in somewhere, and a dehumidifier, sealed floor drains, longer downspouts and, where the lot allows, soil regraded away from the walls will do more than any spray.

Damp wood is the second consequence. Sill plates resting on wet stone, joists over an earthen crawlspace and porch framing that never dries out become soft enough for carpenter ants to excavate, and occasionally wet enough for eastern subterranean termites. Termites turn up less often in the city than in the suburbs, yet Bridgeport's frame cottages, with their low sills and crawlspaces, are about as exposed as Chicago housing gets. Pencil-width mud tubes climbing a foundation, trim that sounds hollow when tapped and a burst of winged insects indoors in April or May all call for a licensed inspection. Coarse sawdust under a window frame points to carpenter ants instead.

Frame cottage, brick two-flat or new townhome

Wood-frame cottages have the most entry points of any house type here. Siding gaps, settled sills, unsealed utility lines and the seam where the original house meets a rear addition all admit mice, and the crawlspaces under some cottages are open to rats and skunks. Many lack fire blocking, so mice run freely up wall cavities. Weathered wood soffits and fascia are easy work for squirrels where a gutter has pulled away, and raccoons like the flat roofs of rear additions where they butt against the main house.

Brick two-flats bring the familiar issues of old masonry: soft mortar at grade, window wells and filled-in coal chutes. In two-flats with tenants, German cockroaches move between floors along plumbing stacks, so both units should be treated together. Newer townhomes and infill houses are tighter, but they share the same alleys, so garage door seals, foundation plantings and utility penetrations still matter. A house that sits below the street needs extra attention to drainage and window wells, which pays off against both water and pests.

Palmisano Park, the old quarry and nearby wildlife

Henry C. Palmisano Park at Halsted and 27th Street occupies the former Stearns Quarry, a limestone pit worked from the 1830s and later used as a landfill. It reopened in 2009 as a 27-acre park with a fishing pond, wetland terraces, prairie plantings and a hill locals call Mount Bridgeport. McGuane Park, which opened in 1905 as Mark White Square, sits directly south on Poplar Avenue. Together they add trees, water and open ground to a dense neighborhood.

Homes near the parks may see a bit more of the raccoons, opossums and squirrels that use them, plus mosquitoes on still summer evenings. The pond's fish eat mosquito larvae, so standing water in your own yard, such as buckets, clogged gutters and birdbaths, is usually the bigger source; empty it weekly. Animals inside the parks are the Park District's responsibility, while an animal in your attic or under your porch is a job for a licensed wildlife specialist. Squirrels from the park trees and from mature parkway trees on the surrounding blocks also find the weathered wood soffits of nearby cottages, so an annual look at the roof edge is worthwhile on these streets.

Bridgeport through the year

The year opens with rats and closes with mice, and moisture and wood pests fill the months between. Snowmelt is the best moment to count burrows, and late fall is the moment to finish sealing before cold weather drives mice into wall cavities. Use the timeline to schedule drainage and exclusion work ahead of each wave rather than after it arrives.

• March to April: rat burrows exposed by snowmelt along fences, garages and river-edge blocks
• April to May: possible termite swarms and carpenter ants on damp wood
• May to June: squirrels raise litters in soffits and attics, pavement ants along sidewalks
• June to August: moisture pests in basements and rats feeding in gardens and compost
• Late August to September: wasp nests under eaves and in garages
• October to November: mice move into frame cottages and two-flats
• December to February: rats shelter in garages and under porches, especially under snow piles near carts

Prevention for canal-era houses and their yards

Water and the lowest openings come first, because that is where most Bridgeport problems begin, and the roofline and garage come after. Several of these steps also protect the house from water damage, so they pay for themselves even before a pest shows up. In a frame cottage, put the sill and crawlspace items at the top of the list, since those openings are where termites, rats and mice all get their start in this kind of house.

• Keep a dehumidifier running below grade and cap unused floor drains
• Lengthen downspouts and slope soil away from the walls wherever the lot permits
• Pull mulch, soil and firewood back so nothing wooden touches siding or sills
• Close the seam between a rear addition and the original cottage with flashing and sealant
• Cover crawlspace openings with heavy galvanized mesh
• Compost in a closed bin on hardware cloth and harvest ripe produce quickly
• Fit garage doors with metal-backed bottom seals and patch broken garage floors
• Tuckpoint soft mortar and put covers on window wells of brick buildings

How a service visit usually goes

In Bridgeport the inspection almost always begins behind the house. A technician walks the alley and yard first, checking the fence line, garage door corners, garden beds and the base of back stairs for burrows and runways, then circles the foundation and opens the crawlspace if there is one. In a frame cottage, expect a flashlight and probe along the sill plate and at the joint with any rear addition. Suspected termites get their own inspection, with wood probed and walls checked for mud tubes, and termite work is usually priced separately once the extent is known.

Rat control here is a program rather than a single visit, with return trips to service stations and treat any new burrows. Moisture insects may need only an exterior perimeter treatment and advice on drainage. Same-day visits are often available for rats and mice. Ask the technician to flag drainage problems and wood touching soil, because correcting those cuts down on repeat work, and keep a simple sketch of where the bait stations sit.