People often assume that when the weather gets cooler, pest populations go dormant. In truth, many pests can remain active all year, and some specifically invade homes to escape the cold. Only by taking early preventive measures can you stay protected from overwintering pests.
What Are Overwintering Pests?
Big and small, animals of all kinds hunker down for the winter. The cooler half of the year is the time when nature slows down and survival instincts kick in. Pests are driven indoors in search of food and shelter, and many can survive the winter off the food and warmth your home provides. Here are some of the most common overwintering pests to watch out for:
- Rodents: As tiny, warm-blooded mammals, rodents must find warm areas in order to not freeze. That’s why mice and rats are such common invaders of local homes, especially once it starts to get cold out.
- Insects: From ants and cockroaches to clothing moths and carpet beetles, insects of all shapes and sizes will look for safety anywhere they can find it.
- Spiders: As bugs are driven in to survive the cold, the larger predators that eat them follow suit. Spiders can survive cold temperatures, but they’ll still follow their prey indoors.
What Problems Do Overwintering Pests Cause?
No matter what kind of overwintering pest your home is presented with, the problems go much deeper than you might suspect. The reason it’s important to act quickly on home pest control is because the longer a pest population is around, the more they can pose other serious problems:
- Damage: Rodents will chew through wires and leave marks everywhere you look, and bugs living in the walls can cause structural damage. There is all kinds of damage pests can cause to your property.
- Disease: From dangerous diseases like plague and rabies to parasites like ticks and fleas, pests can bring other dangers along with them.
- Odor: Pest activity causes foul odors, and it doesn’t take long for the droppings and brooding smells of pests to overwhelm your nostrils.
Early Prevention Is Crucial
If you wait until a pest problem presents itself to act on it, it’s probably too late to effectively solve the problem. Pests breed quickly and stick to the shadows, so you’re less likely to spot them directly than you are to spot the signs of their damage or some other side effect of a pest infestation. While it’s important to do these things periodically, especially in the fall before winter sets in, here are some simple steps you can take to prevent pest outbreaks:
- Food storage: Weak or easily accessible food packaging can make for ready meals for foraging pests.
- Trash storage: The same is true of the food we throw away — pests will attack these sources. Store trash in securely lidded bins.
- Crack sealing: It’s important to regularly check for holes or cracks around the exterior of your home. No opening is too small for a pest to crawl or dig through.
Professional Prevention Is Best
There’s only so much that do-it-yourself means can accomplish when it comes to pest prevention, even more so during the time of year when they’re most likely to invade. Rather than take it all on yourself, trust your local pest professionals to keep your home protected. At Action Pest Control, our trained staff can get started today on an inspection of your home. Not only will this determine your level of risk, it can provide peace of mind that a winter pest population isn’t growing in the corners of your home. If pests are found, only our proven solutions are guaranteed to eliminate them and make sure they don’t come back.
Don’t let pests camp out in your home over the winter, contact Action Pest Control to get started on proper winter pest control.