West De Pere: college town, Broadway, and new growth
De Pere is divided by the Fox River, and the west side has its own history. When the 1839 division created separate towns, the west bank stayed part of Howard, and it existed as its own city — West De Pere — until it consolidated with De Pere in 1890 to form a single government. The name of the whole city comes from “Rapides Des Pères,” the rapids of the fathers, after the 1671 St. Francis Xavier Mission. The west side is where St. Norbert College sits, near the Fox River — founded by Abbot Pennings in 1898 — and it’s the side that grew Broadway into a commercial spine. Today De Pere holds about 25,410 people across both banks.
For pest control, the west side reads as two zones. The older neighborhoods near St. Norbert College and the Broadway district hold settled homes with the entry points that come with age. West and southwest of there, newer subdivisions have spread across former farmland, with plenty of construction from the mid-twentieth century onward — ranches, split-levels, and modern builds. Both get pests; they just let them in differently.
BugBoss The X-Terminator is not a De Pere company. We run out of Clintonville, in rural Waupaca County, and the west side of De Pere sits at the edge of the metro area we reach. We won’t pretend we’re the nearest truck to a west-side address. What we are is the rural exclusion and wildlife specialist worth calling when the problem is one we’re built for — fall invaders, rodents, carpenter ants, and attic wildlife — the work we do every week on old farmhouses out in the country, and the work the metro franchises won’t take without a contract.
Two housing eras, two sets of entry points
The mistake homeowners in the west side’s newer subdivisions make is assuming a modern house is pest-proof. It isn’t. It just leaks in more hidden places than an old one.
Older homes near the college and Broadway have the weak points of any settled house: foundations that have cracked and shifted over decades of Wisconsin freeze-thaw, loosened soffit and fascia, aging windows gapped at the sash, and older masonry chimneys that have lost their caps. Many have real, spacious attics — good harborage for overwintering insects and wildlife.
Newer subdivision homes are tighter on paper but predictable in practice. Fall invaders and mice exploit the construction junctions: soffit returns and ridge vents, weep holes in brick veneer, gaps around HVAC and plumbing penetrations, garage-door corners, and unsealed sill plates hidden behind the siding. A complex roofline with multiple planes gives more of these gaps, not fewer. New construction changes where you seal, not whether you have to.
And the newer subdivisions have geography working against them. Much of the west side’s growth spread across former farmland, so plenty of homes still back onto open ground, fencerows, and green corridors — which matters more than the build date, as the next section explains.
The fall invaders: why new houses get them too
Every September and October, the west side gets the wave every home in our territory gets. Cluster flies, boxelder bugs, and Asian lady beetles mass on the warm south- and west-facing walls, then work inside to overwinter. On a mild day in late winter they wake in the wall voids and turn up at the windows, looking like a fresh invasion.
Homeowners in the newer subdivisions are often shocked to get hammered by cluster flies, assuming it’s an old-house problem. It isn’t. Cluster fly larvae parasitize earthworms in the soil, so a two-year-old house sitting on former farm ground produces the same fall population as an older home near the college — it just lets them in through soffit returns and weep holes instead of a foundation crack. Boxelder bugs feed on boxelder and maple seeds from the trees around every neighborhood, and Asian lady beetles pile in beside them.
The fix is the same regardless of build date: a timed early-fall exterior treatment on the sunny walls, plus sealing the seams. Our cluster fly control guide covers the timing, and if they’re already stacking up on the glass, see cluster flies in windows.
Carpenter ants, mice, and college-town bed bugs
Carpenter ants show up in both eras. Older homes near Broadway and the college have aged wood and decades of small leaks; newer homes get them through moisture around decks, window and door flashing, and roof-edge leaks people assume new construction is immune to. Swarmers at the windows in spring, or big black ants active indoors in winter, mean the nest is inside the heated structure. Control means locating the nest and correcting the moisture, not spraying the trail — see the carpenter ants page.
Mice peak September through November and don’t care how new your house is. With open ground and the Fox River corridor close by, a dime-sized gap is all it takes. Newer homes leak at the construction junctions; older homes leak at settled foundations and soffit gaps. Trapping clears what’s inside, but sealing the building is what stops the supply — see the mice page.
There’s also a college-town wrinkle. Bed bugs travel with people and their belongings, and the high-turnover housing around St. Norbert College — student housing, off-campus rentals, and nearby lodging — sees the pressure any turnover-heavy area does. They aren’t a DIY pest; partial treatment lets them rebound, so they need thorough treatment and follow-up. And wasps and hornets round out the warm season, nesting under eaves and deck structures and turning aggressive in August.
Wildlife along the Fox River
The Fox River corridor brings wildlife right up to west-side rooflines, and this is where a rural specialist earns the drive from Clintonville. Homes near the water and the wooded edges of the newer subdivisions see more attic and chimney intrusions than an interior lot.
Bats roost in the older attics and in larger new builds with complex rooflines. Exclusion is legally restricted — Wisconsin protects its bats, and the DNR keeps one-way exits open June 1 through July 31 during the maternity season, when flightless pups are in the roost. Sealing then traps and kills the pups, which is illegal and a worse mess. We do the work in the legal window: find the exits at dusk, install one-way doors, wait at least a week, then seal and clean up the guano. The rules are in our Wisconsin bat exclusion law guide, and the process is on the bats and bats in attic pages.
Squirrels chew into attics at roof edges and gable vents — a squirrels in attic job that ends with sealing every access point. Raccoons den in chimneys and torn soffits, especially females in spring; that’s a raccoon in chimney situation needing humane removal and a proper cap. All of it is our wildlife removal work, detailed in the attic wildlife removal guide, and it’s the capability the metro pest franchises generally don’t offer — see the raccoons and squirrels pages.
Beyond the fall invaders: the rest of the west-side picture
Cluster flies, mice, and wildlife lead the list, but a mixed-era west side carries a broader mix. Nuisance ants — pavement ants trailing out of driveway and patio cracks, and odorous house ants in the kitchen — are a steady call from the newer subdivisions. These aren’t the wood-damaging carpenter ants, and spraying the visible trail only scatters them; the fix is treating the colony at its source.
Spiders follow their food, gathering where the insect supply is good — well-lit newer homes, garages, and porches that pull in flying insects at night. The durable control is an exterior program that knocks down the insects they feed on, not sweeping webs off the eaves.
Ticks matter along the wooded edges where the newer west-side subdivisions push against old field margins and the river greenway. Deer ticks carry Lyme disease and wait in the tall grass along those margins, so families with kids and dogs backing onto green space are the ones at risk. A perimeter treatment targets that transition zone.
The Broadway business district, the restaurants near campus, and the buildings that serve St. Norbert draw the commercial pest pressure that comes with food service and student traffic. And winter on the west side is mostly about what already got in during fall: mice breeding in a warm wall void, and overwintering flies and beetles waking at the windows on a mild day. Sealing in September and October is what keeps the winter quiet, which is why we push fall exclusion instead of chasing individual insects through the cold months.
Honest positioning and how we work
Here’s the straight version. BugBoss is Clintonville-based and family-owned — owner Brian Zahringer runs the truck and answers the phone. Our home ground is rural country out around Pulaski, Bonduel, and Shawano. The west side of De Pere is the metro edge of what we reach, and for a quick one-off a company inside the metro is closer.
Where we’re the better call is the specialized, problem-first work: older-home and new-build exclusion, fall invaders, carpenter ants, and wildlife. We do pest control and wildlife removal both — rare among the companies serving this area — with no long-term contract and no cancellation fee. You’re hiring a specialist for a specific problem, not signing onto a route. That’s the whole point of our no-contracts approach, whether it’s a residential job or a commercial building along Broadway.
Every job runs the same way. We inspect the property inside and out, and on the west side that means establishing early whether we are working an older home with aged entry points or a newer build where nobody sealed the penetrations when it went up — because the work differs. We treat the source rather than what is visible. We do the exclusion that keeps the next wave out. And we follow up to confirm it worked.
Call BugBoss when you’ve got fall invaders on the windows, carpenter ant swarmers indoors in spring, mice you can’t trap your way out of, or scratching in the attic that turns out to be bats, squirrels, or a raccoon. For a west-side De Pere home, those are exactly the jobs we’re built for. Reach us at 866-BUGBOSS, or request a quote. We’ll be honest about whether we’re the right fit — and if we are, we’ll solve it without a contract.