Pest Control in Oakwood, Staten Island
Oakwood lies on the East Shore between New Dorp and Bay Terrace, extending from Amboy Road down toward Hylan Boulevard and the marshy shoreline at Oakwood Beach. The Oakwood Heights station on the Staten Island Railway serves the neighborhood's northern section, and Hylan Boulevard provides shops, restaurants and bus service. Housing is largely detached single-family homes and two-family houses built in the postwar decades, many on quiet cul-de-sacs. Near the shore, much of Oakwood Beach has been returned to wetland after Hurricane Sandy, and Great Kills Park, part of Gateway National Recreation Area, lies just to the south.
Also known as: Oakwood Heights, Oakwood Beach.
About Oakwood
Oakwood was farmland and woods for centuries, with scattered homes along Amboy Road and a small beach colony of summer bungalows near the water. The Staten Island Railway spurred some early suburban growth, but most homes were built after the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964. Hurricane Sandy severely flooded Oakwood Beach in 2012, and residents organized to accept a state buyout program that demolished many homes and allowed the land to revert to natural marsh.
Common Pest Problems in Oakwood
Oakwood's shoreline has changed dramatically since Hurricane Sandy, as bought-out lots at Oakwood Beach have grown back into marsh, meadow and thicket. That expanding wild land brings wildlife closer to the remaining homes. Raccoons and skunks travel out of the reclaimed wetlands and Great Kills Park at night, raiding trash, digging for grubs in lawns and denning under decks and sheds. Garter snakes and other harmless species are more common near the marsh edges and sometimes find their way into garages and basements.
Many Oakwood houses are wood-framed and several decades old, and the damp soils of the East Shore favor subterranean termites. Earwigs gather in the moist mulch and leaf litter along foundations and slip indoors through gaps beneath doors and around basement windows, especially during humid summer weather. Mice move inside each fall, and homes backing onto the natural areas tend to see more activity than those closer to Amboy Road.