Keeping pests out of your home begins with learning about these traveling critters. Understand what attracts them into your home, what pests are common in the area and how you can effectively extinguish any pest problem in your home.
Common Critters
Before you target those unwanted critters, understand which ones are most likely to hitch a ride into your home. Seemingly harmless tasks can result in unintentionally inviting critters into your abode, or even sneaking them in with you. You might find cellar spiders, with their skinny bodies and long legs, or common house spiders creeping around your room. An unwelcome stink bug, marked by its dark, mottled brown appearance, might scurry into your home in the fall, when these bugs typically seek shelter. Insects aren’t the only problem pests that can haunt your home. You might find mice or rats, including the Norway rat, which often burrows under buildings and thrives in urban or suburban areas.
How They Travel
Wildlife and insects in your home are certainly a nuisance, especially when you’re dealing with critters who have several modes of transportation into your home. Bed bugs, for example, can hitch a ride with you from a hotel, airplane seat or cab, sneak into your luggage and then take up residence in your home, all without your knowledge. Gaps and holes in your home’s exterior can result in a rodent scurrying its way inside. Stink bugs can travel through exterior cracks, slipping into your home to overwinter.
Prevention Tips
Simple preventative measures around the house can reduce your risk of a house filled with traveling critters.
- Only bring in firewood to be used right away. Firewood that sits inside will allow any insects harboring in it to warm up and emerge.
- Keep firewood stacked away from the house during the warm season.
- Remove leaf litter and heavy vegetation from around the foundation of your home.
- Trim back trees and shrubs touching the home.
- Caulk entryways to minimize holes and crevices that bugs and rodents use as a tunnel into your home.
- Keep your house clean. Sweep up food crumbs and wash away any spills; the appeal of potential food can lure unwanted wildlife and bugs into your home.
Reliable Pest Control
Familiarizing yourself with common household critters and understanding what draws them into your home can help. When you need professional guidance, turn to Eco-Care Pest Management, which delivers more than 34 years of knowledge about those critters that invade Maryland homes. Contact us today for a home inspection or treatment, and those spiders, stink bugs, rats or bed bugs will be sent packing.
