Some times those creaks and other subtle noises in your home at night are not just aging wood, people’s footsteps, or ‘the wind’. In fact, a lot of those noises could be the sound of a smorgasbord of pests – all living right under your roof. The intent is not to scare you, but to bring to light the problem that is plagued by most families’ homes today. Many people may not know it, but they could have some kind of pest infestation. We tend not to notice until it becomes a serious problem.
It is important to understand what is meant by the plural noun, “pests.” We are not talking about people you don’t like, but an extensive variety of critters that make their nests in people’s homes. Critters could include the following: Ants, Bedbugs, Fleas, Flies, Moths, Roaches, Rodents, Silverfish, Spiders, Termites, and other various insects that are derived from specific continents. Obviously many of these pests are not as common as others and usually pose no real danger to humans. If anything, almost all pests just prove to be some kind of nuisance and nothing more. That is not always the case, though. Bees and wasps are known for making their nests in windowsills or even underneath overhangs from a roof. Any small crevices can provide quick passage for them to occupy someone’s home. Typically bees will stay outside for the most part, but still keep a territory around your home, which poses potential danger for children or someone with allergies towards insects. Disposing or fending off bee infestation is not a terribly difficult task. As one would think, you need to attack the infestation at the source (That will be a good thing to remember for many kinds of pest infestations). Find where the bee/wasp hive is residing and use aerosol to stunt the population and (hopefully) destroy the majority of the hive. If there are any obvious points of entry the insects may be using, it would be beneficial to use a residual dust on the openings.
Certain kinds of ants and spiders can pose a potential danger to a home’s residents as well – if allowed to escalate into a full-blown infestation. The two types of spiders to be vigilant about are the brown recluse and black widow. If bitten by either spider, it is extremely important to get treated immediately. On the topic of spiders comes the most important rule regarding any kind of pest – prevention. Prevention is your strongest tool against pest infestation and will insure that when pest season comes around again, your home will be free of any intruders. With spiders, things are quite delicate. It is beneficial to seal all cracks where spiders could gain entrance from outside. Equip doors and windows with correctly fitting screens. Destroy any webs you may find and try to keep other pests under control in your home; then spiders will not have to take care of them for you. If everything seems tiresome, many kinds of insecticides will do the trick as well.
Now that the more uncommon, yet dangerous pests have been squashed, it is also valuable to know how to take care of the ‘nuisances.’ The one thing that usually comes to mind when we here the word pest – rodents. Rats, mice, etc. all fall into this category. Luckily, anyone can still take care of these annoyances themselves. If you open a history book and take a look at the 14th century, you will be reminded of a very deadly force that struck England and brought about the death of 60% of Europe’s population. This was the Black Death. It is believed that fleas carrying a virus were the trigger to this terrible pandemic, and how do fleas travel? On animals, of course. Rats made the perfect transportation unit to distribute fleas (and thus the disease) all across Europe. There is clearly no plague in present time, but rats still know how to carry disease, which is why it is critical to get rid of them before they become a problem. Getting rid of these rodents can be a lot easier than one would imagine. The obvious choice are mousetraps or any other kind of effective trap. Getting a predator such as a dog or cat can keep the problem at bay as well. Sealing all cabinets and food could potentially remove the rodents from your home, once they realize they can not receive food there anymore.
As you have read, pests come in all different sizes and they all have their own special ways of making people’s lives a little more difficult. It is possible to handle them yourself, though. The two things to always keep in mind are: Locate and attack the infestation source; use prevention to your advantage. There are plenty of pesticides that you can purchase to make things easier and this will typically be everyone’s method of attack. Hopefully, prevention will keep people from having to do that.
Resources: Orkin
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