What Are the Common Winter Pests in North Carolina?
The most common pests in the winter include:
- Stink Bugs
- Termites
- Spiders
- Ants
- Beetles
- Roaches
- Flies
- Mice
When summers are longer than usual and fall stays unusually warm, summer pests can be expected to hang around longer than normal. This tends to affect termites, which can stick around when temperatures stay warm.
Detecting Pests in the Winter
People who have recently moved to the first-in-flight state can be taken aback by the winter pests who creatively find their way into their homes. Can you blame them? We’d want to escape the cold weather too! However, these pesky insects are definitely not a wanted guest in your warm home at any time during the year.
How exactly are they getting inside? Surprisingly they can sneak their way indoors by hitching a ride on your shoes, in the cuffs of your pants, hiding in your firewood, crawling through your plumbing, and even chewing their way in through thin places in your attic and crawlspace.
Gaining an understanding of how they get inside can help you keep an eye out for these unwanted house guests. It can also help you catch a potential pest problem early, which makes them easier to exterminate. This is especially important when it comes to rodent problems.
A rodent problem that goes unnoticed can cause lasting and substantial damage to your home. Nest-making rodents can chew through wiring, causing house fires. (Not exactly the way you want to warm your home this winter!)
How to Prevent Unwanted Winter Pests:
Pests are never fun, especially not in the winter when it’s cold and you have enough to worry about. Here are a few tips to keep unwanted pests from entering your home in the first place:
- Keep your kitchen clean. Crumbs and food residue can tempt pests to make their way inside your home to find refuge from the cold and enjoy a cozy meal as they make your home their own.
- Store your firewood outdoors. Pests can easily make firewood into a nice travel home. Finding a nice, dry area outdoors to store your firewood is the best way to prevent bugs from hitching a ride right inside your front door.
- Take your trash out each night. The stinky trash isn’t pleasant for us at all, but the bugs love it most of all. The best way to avoid this fiasco is to get into the habit of taking out the trash each night after dinner, and you will give unwanted house pests one less reason to claim your home as their own.
- Keep your home clutter-free. Having unnecessary clutter sitting around your home will create the perfect hiding spot for your unwanted pests. Cluttered-up spaces turn your home into a sort of bug hotel. Just call it a bug-BnB.
Are you already taking these preventative steps to reduce your risk of winter pests? Take a look at this mid-winter maintenance checklist to make sure you are continuing to reduce your risk of infestation.
However, should you find that despite your best efforts, your home has become a winter retreat for any sort of insect, rodent, pest, or critter, there is one option that will ensure their immediate expulsion.
Take Charge of the Winter Pests with a Professional Exterminator
If you happen to notice that winter pests have taken refuge in your home for the winter, it’s time to act efficiently to remove them effectively. It’s time to call in professional exterminators. By figuring out where the problem areas are, a professional can provide the correct treatment for the type of pest that has entered.
Don’t attempt to take care of your bug problem by yourself. Pest removal can be a tricky process, and some chemicals found in bug removal insecticides can be harmful to children and pets if used improperly. It’s best to trust a professional when it comes to buggy situations.
When pests have entered your home, you need them gone as quickly as possible. Rid-a-Bug has decades of experience exterminating common and uncommon pests in North Carolina. We respond within 24 hours and help you correct whatever attracted the pests to your home in the first place. Contact Rid-A-Bug Exterminating for fast, thorough extermination today!