Dec 7, 2023 | Florida Pest Control
As the holiday season approaches, most of us are gearing up to host dinners and celebrations with friends and family. While preparing for your guests, the last thing you want to deal with is a pest infestation! Spiders, roaches, rodents, and more household pests are looking to your home for food, water, and shelter. Before you break out your holiday decorations, check out our pest prevention tips for holiday pest control!
Inspect Your Decorations
If your South Florida home has an attic, basement, or a garage, it’s likely you’re storing your holiday decorations in them. While these areas can be a great way to store items, they are also dark and secluded, making it the perfect place for pests to invade. Pests, like rats and mice, will crawl into your holiday storage boxes you put away last year, destroying and contaminating them!
Before you bring down your holiday decorations, make sure to inspect and unpack them outside of your home. After the holiday season is over, pack certain decorations, like potpourri, foliage, and Indian corn in airtight containers to help prevent a pest infestation next year.
Check Your Trees & Wreaths
If celebrating Christmas, many families tend to buy an authentic Christmas tree and wreath. Unfortunately, these items can carry pests like spiders, moths, mites, and even squirrels! To prevent these pests from hitchhiking their way into your home, inspect both items outside and shake them to ensure they aren’t hiding in them. Likewise, before buying the items, check to see if they contain any droppings, gnawing marks, and other damage before bringing them inside.
Keep Your Home Tidy
Pests love clutter and with extra guests in your home, trash and clutter can add up. It’s important to keep your home tidy and clean as much as possible. After each meal, clean up any crumbs and spills in your dining room and kitchen areas. Don’t forget to take the trash out every night and place it in a trash container with a tightly sealed lid. If you know you will have extra food supplies, look to store them in an air-tight container and place it in your pantry or refrigerator.
Call Your Local Pest Control Company
If you’ve noticed more pests than you’re comfortable with before your guests arrive, consider calling your local South Florida pest control company. These professionals will be able to inspect your home, identify the pest and entry points, and recommend the best pest control and prevention plan to avoid holiday pests in the future!
Nov 30, 2023 | Florida Pest Control
If you’ve noticed an increase of spiders inside your Florida home, it can be quite alarming for most homeowners! While most spiders are not dangerous to humans and are considered a benefit to our environment, it doesn’t mean you want them inside your house. With several species found in Florida, including daddy long legs, southern house spider, black widows, and more, it’s inevitable to come across one, but it’s easy to prevent, reduce, or eliminate their presence around your home. Check out the reasons why spiders are entering your home and easy spider prevention tips to avoid them in the future.
Why Do Spiders Enter Homes?
Spiders enter homes to search for food and find a habitat to continue looking for prey to feed on. Spiders eat insects, so if you’ve found webs around your home, it’s likely that those spiders found their food source. Inspect the inside and outside of your home for spider signs, these include spider webs, egg sacs, insects they feed on, or the spiders themselves.
How Can I Stop Spiders from Invading My Home?
There are several ways you can help reduce spider activity on your property. Spiders are looking for food, so it’s important to reduce the amount available to them by removing other household pests from your property. You can reduce the insects on your property by:
- Keeping your outside garbage cans covered and sealed with a tight lid
- Keep your exterior lights off at night or replace your white lights with yellow lights
- Address any moisture problems throughout your home, including clogged gutters, leaky pipes, crawlspace issues.
- Some insects like certain vegetation, such as weeds, look to reduce some around your home.
Not only is it important to reduce the insect population to avoid spiders, but it is equally important to deter them from even entering your home. Consider these spider prevention tips to avoid them from invading indoors:
- Seal any holes or openings found in your windows, doors, and foundation.
- Repair torn screens, broken windowpanes, and damaged seals.
- Spiders can slip under doors, consider installing weatherstripping to close that gap.
- Spiders like to hide in clutter, so remove unnecessary items in your yard such as old tires, rock piles, old lumber, and even old vehicles.
- Keep a tidy home and remove old newspapers or magazines.
If you’ve noticed more spider activity than you’re used to, consider calling your local Florida pest control company for help. These professionals will provide you with a thorough inspection and recurring pest control plan to help avoid spiders and other household pests in the future.
Oct 26, 2023 | Pest Control
With the holidays nearing, now is the perfect time to ensure you don’t have pantry pests in your Tennessee home. Pantry pests are insects that like to invade your stored food products, often laying their eggs to reproduce and causing a full blow infestation. Let’s go over common pantry pests you can find in your home and how you can further prevent them.
Common Pantry Pests in Tennessee
Indian Meal Moth
The Indian meal moth is known for feeding on several types of food found in our pantry, including dried fruits and vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, candies, and pet food. You can identify these pests by their two-toned wing pattern with a tan to copper oval-shaped body. These pests are highly attracted to light and anywhere they can find food.
Merchant Grain Beetles
This pantry pest has a dark brown body, six legs, and six saw-like teeth on each side of their bodies. Their narrow oval body shape allows them to crawl inside of packaging to eat, live, and reproduce. They prefer to feed on cereals, cake mixes, macaroni, and cookies, even though their names suggest they like grain!
How to Prevent Pantry Pests:
- Invest in proper storage. Utilize food storage containers with airtight locking. The best types of foods to keep in these containers are cereals, pasta, cookies, grains, and seeds.
- Inspect your groceries. The most common way of getting pantry pests is from the store. Inspect the packaging of the items you buy and make sure there are no tears or openings.
- Keep a clean home. On a regular basis, clean out your old pantry items after their expiration date and clean up any leftover crumbs or spills after each meal.
If you suspect pantry pests have invaded your pantry, give your local Tennessee pest control company a call for a customized pest control plan and a free inspection!
Oct 16, 2023 | Pest Control
As the leaves begin to change and the air turns crisp, we welcome the beauty of autumn. However, with the arrival of fall, we also welcome a different kind of guest into our homes – spiders. While most spiders prefer to stay outdoors, some decide to seek shelter indoors during the cooler months. Two common culprits are daddy long legs and cellar spiders. In this post, we’ll help you identify and distinguish between these two fall pests, understand their habits, and offer tips on how to keep them at bay.
Identifying Daddy Long Legs and Cellar Spiders
Daddy Long Legs (Pholcidae):
- Daddy long legs, also known as harvestmen, are easily recognizable due to their long, thin legs. They have a small, round body and often appear pale brown or gray in color.
- They are known for their distinctive appearance: an elongated body and exceptionally long legs, which can span up to 2 inches.
- Daddy long legs are commonly found hanging from their webs in corners or hiding in dark, damp areas of your home.
Cellar Spiders (Araneae):
- Cellar spiders are quite similar in appearance to daddy long legs, with long, spindly legs and a small body. They typically range from pale yellow to light brown.
- While they share a resemblance with daddy long legs, cellar spiders have a habit of creating disorganized, tangled webs in dark, moist locations.
Similarities and Differences
Daddy long legs and cellar spiders have their similarities but are not the same species. Here are some key differences and similarities between the two:
Similarities:
- Leg Length: Both species have long, delicate legs.
- Preferred Environments: They tend to seek refuge in dark, undisturbed areas of your home.
- Beneficial Predators: Both spiders are harmless to humans and can be beneficial as they prey on other household pests.
Differences:
- Web Structure: Daddy long legs have irregular, cobweb-like webs, while cellar spiders build messy, tangle-like webs.
- Body Shape: Daddy long legs have a round body, while cellar spiders are elongated and more cylindrical in shape.
Common Habitats
Both daddy long legs and cellar spiders are frequently found in similar environments, including:
- Basements: These areas tend to be cool, dark, and humid, which attract both species.
- Garages: Cluttered and dimly lit garages are another favorite hiding spot.
- Crawl Spaces: If your home has crawl spaces, you might discover these spiders hanging out there.
- Sheds and Outdoor Structures: They may also appear in garden sheds and similar outdoor structures.
Are They Harmful to Humans?
The good news is that both daddy long legs and cellar spiders are harmless to humans. They don’t pose any significant health risks or property damage. In fact, they can be seen as allies in your pest control efforts as they help control populations of other insects in your home.
Preventing and Getting Rid of Fall Spiders
To prevent and manage daddy long legs and cellar spiders in your home, follow these steps:
- Reduce Clutter: Clear away any unnecessary clutter in dark, damp areas, as this provides fewer hiding spots for these pests.
- Seal Entry Points: Make sure windows and doors are sealed properly to prevent spiders from entering your home.
- Reduce Humidity: Use a dehumidifier to reduce moisture levels in basements, crawl spaces, and other areas where these spiders tend to thrive.
- Regular Cleaning: Regularly clean and dust your home to remove cobwebs and potential prey for these spiders.
- Professional Pest Control: If your spider problem persists, consider hiring a professional pest control service for effective fall pest control.
Request a Free Pest Control Quote
If you’re dealing with a fall pest problem in your home, don’t hesitate to request a free pest control quote from our experts. We specialize in handling all sorts of household pests, including spiders, and can provide you with the solutions you need for a pest-free autumn.
Don’t let daddy long legs and cellar spiders take over your living space this fall. With the right knowledge and actions, you can enjoy the beauty of the season without these uninvited guests. Contact your local pest control company today for your free pest control quote and keep your home spider-free all season long.
Oct 3, 2023 | Pest Control
As the fall season approaches in Georgia, homeowners may find themselves facing a variety of household pests, including the unsettling presence of house centipedes. These long-legged creatures can be quite a nuisance, but fear not – in this blog post, we’ll delve into what you need to know about house centipedes in Georgia, from identification and their common hiding spots to whether they pose a threat to humans. We’ll also provide practical tips on how to prevent or get rid of them with the help of professional pest control services.
Identifying House Centipedes
House centipedes are easily recognizable by their unique appearance. They have long, slender bodies that can range from 1 to 1.5 inches in length and are covered in numerous pairs of legs. Despite their name, they typically have 15 pairs of legs, giving them a creepy-crawly appearance.
Common Hiding Spots
House centipedes thrive in damp, dark environments, making your home an attractive habitat. You may encounter them in areas such as basements, crawlspaces, bathrooms, and even kitchens. They are agile hunters, preying on other insects like cockroaches, spiders, and silverfish, which is why they are often found in proximity to their prey.
Are House Centipedes Harmful to Humans?
The good news is that these centipedes are generally not harmful to humans. They are not known to transmit diseases or bite humans unless they feel threatened. However, their presence can be unsettling, and their appearance can cause anxiety for some homeowners. If you’d rather not share your space with these creatures, there are ways to keep them at bay.
Prevention and Pest Control
- Seal Entry Points: Inspect your home for any cracks or gaps in doors, windows, and foundation walls. Seal these openings to prevent centipedes from entering.
- Reduce Moisture: House centipedes thrive in damp environments. Use dehumidifiers in basements and crawlspaces to reduce moisture levels. Fix any plumbing leaks promptly.
- Declutter: Remove piles of newspapers, cardboard boxes, and other clutter that can provide hiding spots for centipedes and their prey.
- Professional Pest Control: The most effective way to deal with house centipedes and other fall pests is to seek the help of a professional pest control company. They can assess the situation, implement effective treatments, and provide ongoing pest management.
While house centipedes in Georgia may seem unsettling, they are generally harmless to humans. However, their presence can be a sign of underlying pest issues in your home. To ensure a pest-free environment and peace of mind, it’s wise to consult a pest control expert.
