Make Year-Round Pest Control Your 2017 Resolution

Make Year-Round Pest Control Your 2017 Resolution

Pest control is like the doctor’s office: you go only when something is wrong. What many forget is that annual checkups and proactive care can prevent bigger problems later. Think of pest control the same way. Proactive care and year-round pest control can save you money, protect your health, and prevent large headaches. This year, make year-round pest control your resolution. Check out the many benefits why.

Benefits of Year-Round Pest Control

When we talk about the benefits of year-round pest control, we want to address it from many different angles: health, money, and prevention. Russell’s pest control thinks you will appreciate a few of our favorite pest control benefits.
 
Affordability

Easy-to-manage payment schedules and control options. A small monthly or quarterly fee now can save you hundreds or thousands in the future. When you pay a small amount to control pests regularly, you won’t be left with a large bill to eliminate insects later.
 
Avoid Large Infestations

Year-round pest control keeps large infestations at bay. When you get year-round treatments, your home will not be targeted by insects who want to live and reproduce in your home. Doesn’t avoiding thousands on bugs in your home sound like a good idea?

Prevents Illness And Disease

Most pests carry bacteria and other pathogens that can be transmitted to people and animals in your home. Year-round control keep insects from biting, stinging, and transmitting disease in your home. Additionally, if anyone in your home suffers from allergies or respiratory concerns such as asthma, year-round pest control helps avoid symptoms and attacks. Many insects shed their shells, emit odors, lay eggs, and leave droppings. All of them are irritants that can cause breathing troubles.
 
Your Home Won’t Smell

Infestations cause your home to smell. If roaches get in, they emit a pheromone that attracts other roaches and keeps the family unit together. The more roaches in your home, the worse your house smells. Once you get rid of the roaches, your home has to be cleaned professionally. Year-round pest control prevents roaches from invading in the first place.
 
Protect Your Belongings And Furnishings

When insects invade, they leave their stains and nest with your linens. Curtains, sheets, bedding, clothing, and rugs can become stained with feces and other fluids when insects make themselves at home. Year-round pest control allows you to protect your belongings and favorite furnishings.
 
Better Sleep at Night

When you have year-round pest control, you can sleep better at night. You won’t have to worry about the pests that are nesting in your walls, digging into the food in your pantry, crawling in your bed at night, or lurking in your basement. You can rest easy knowing that you have the bugs and rodents under control.
 
Russell’s Pest Control wants you to have the peace of mind and quality of life we know you deserve in 2017. Call us now to see how we can help you with your New Year’s resolution. Have a Happy New Year. We look forward to serving you in the brand new year.

Avoid Unwanted Holiday Visitors

Avoid Unwanted Holiday Visitors

Christmas is a very hectic time of year. Typically, you are either hosting a gathering or going to a gathering or two over the next couple of weeks. It is important to understand that you and your visitors have the potential to unknowingly pick up unwanted pests during travel. The last thing you want to do is to become a distributor of unwanted pests!

Bed bugs top the list, but other bugs that can tuck into luggage and use it as their own personal moving van include several species of lice, fleas (in warmer climates or in homes that have pets), cockroaches, spiders, several species of beetles, and more.  Whether you are visiting or being visited, you need to be on the lookout for pests that are trying to sneak into your life.

Vigilance is the key. As you travel or after you have entertained guests, be sure to be aware that pests may have snuck into your space. There are signs, however, that you can become aware of and train yourself to spot. Let’s take a look.

Vigilance during travel:

Understand that pests can be found anywhere – planes, taxis, hotels, grocery stores, malls, hospitals, libraries, and even Grandma’s house – anywhere people frequent is a target for pests. Make sure that as you travel you check soft surfaces like seats, chairs, and beds for signs of pests. Also, be sure to inspect clothing as you shop for signs of pests, paying particular attention to scarves and hats. Inspect food packaging before you purchase any dry goods for signs that pests have tampered with it. Also, glance around checking for droppings from mice or roaches in hotels, restaurants, and other areas known to be plagued by these pests. What, exactly, should you look for? Well, things like:

  • Shed casings

  • Droppings

  • Actual bugs

  • Blood stains

  • Tiny brown spots

  • Black streaks coming from outlets

  • Small tears or punctures in product packaging

  • Unusual odors

  • Discarded wings

Vigilance after visitors leave:

The best way to avoid becoming a home for wayward pests is to clean, clean, clean. Once your company has gone home be sure to wash all bedding on the warmest setting possible and dry thoroughly in your dryer on the hottest settings safe for that fabric. Vacuum and wash floors with hot, soapy water; and be sure to pull out the sofa, stove, and refrigerator and clean there too. Bathrooms should be scoured and bath mats washed in hot water as well. Keeping your eye out for the signs that pests leave behind is a sure way to ensure that you do not spread pests to others, and they have not accidentally introduced them to you.
If after all the tinsel has been pulled from the tree, all the pie has been eaten, and the holidays are nothing more than a memory, you find yourself face-to-face with nuisance, harmful, or dangerous pests, give us a call. The highly trained experts here at Russell’s Pest Control know exactly how to safely and effectively eliminate any pest from your home. With more than 45 years of experience in local pest pressures, Russell’s Pest Control is the name people trust for pest control solutions that work.
Have a safe, happy, and pest-free Christmas.

How To Avoid Getting Holiday Bed Bugs

How To Avoid Getting Holiday Bed Bugs

If you could go back in time to stop something really bad from happening, would you do it? Of course you would. It is a lot easier to prevent something from happening than it is to fix things “after” they have happened. This is the secret to avoiding holiday bed bugs. No. We’re not saying you need to build a time machine. That would be complicated, if not slightly impossible. What we’re saying is that bed bugs are a problem that is best dealt with “before” it happens. Here’s what you need to know.

If you knew that a certain person would be hit by a certain car on a certain day, what would you do? Would you warn them? What if you knew how and where your friend or family could pick up bed bugs, would you tell them?

When you tell your friends and family about bed bugs, you will not only be protecting yourself from an accidental infestation, you’ll be protecting them as well. Public awareness is the most powerful weapon in the war against bed bugs.

3 Places Bed Bugs Get Picked Up During The Holidays

  • Sleep accommodations. It doesn’t matter how nice or how clean, bed bugs can be found in places where people sleep. If your friends and family will be staying somewhere on their way to your home, it is important that they do a quick inspection of any room they stay in. Use a flashlight to inspect bedding, sheets, pillowcases, mattress seams, and the stitching on upholstered furniture for black streaks, fecal pellets, brown blood staining, and shed insect casings.
  • Public transportation. Bed bugs have been found infesting trains, planes, buses, taxis, and other public transportation. Your family members should know what a bed bug looks like when they see one, and they should take a moment to examine their chair for black streaks, blown stains, and shed insect casings. In enclosed spaces, there may be a locker room smell if a large enough infestation is present.
  • Homes. If your friends and family will be staying the night with other friends and family, or at the home of a host family, they should take the same precautions as staying in a hotel or motel.

It is a whole lot easier to stop a bed bug infestation before it begins. Let your family and friends know what to look for when they travel.
If you ever find bed bugs in your home–and you don’t have a time machine–call a professional. These pests are nearly impossible to remove without an entomological understanding of these insects and what modern pest measures are most effective for eradicating them.

If you are in our Knoxville, Gatlinburg or elsewhere in our Tennessee service area, let Russell’s Pest Control assist you. Our team is BedbugFREE Approved by Bedbug Central, the most authoritative information resource on bed bugs in the country. When holiday bed bugs find a way in, get them out with bed bug control services from Russell’s Pest Control.

Holiday Cooking And Cockroaches

Holiday Cooking And Cockroaches

We realize this is an unsavory topic. The last thing you want to think about while getting ready for some holiday cooking is cockroaches. That is unless you’re already dealing with cockroaches. If you’re already seeing a cockroach here and there, cockroaches may be “all” you’re thinking about right now. Here are a few tips to protect your holiday foods from contamination.

Cockroach Protection

  • If you’ve seen a cockroach running across your kitchen floor or zipping up your wall, there is a good chance there are many more living inside your walls, and crawling around in places you can’t see, like your silverware drawer. The last thing you want to do is use a piece of silverware that has had a cockroach crawling on it. Keep these items safe by putting silverware in plastic containers or hard plastic bags. It may be inconvenient to retrieve these items when you need them, but it could prevent harmful bacteria from getting onto foods.

  • Cockroaches love pantries. It is important to make sure your pantry is protected. If you have cockroaches digging in your trash, nibbling on rotting organic matter under your fridge or on the side of your stove, and crawling on your toilets, they will spread harmful bacteria to your pantry items when they chew through paper or cardboard protected items. Protect these items by storing them in sealed plastic containers.

  • Since cockroaches love trash, and your trash can is one of the places they will pick up bacteria, it is a good idea to buy a trash can with a lid that seals. This will keep those cockroaches from coming and going as they please.

  • When you’re sleeping, cockroaches will be walking around on everything. Be sure to clean all food prep surfaces before you start your holiday cooking. Make sure to also clean cutting boards and dishes that will be used in the preparation of foods.

These tips can help to protect your family from the diseases and harmful bacteria that can be spread by cockroaches, but it is much better to live without cockroaches. If you live in our Tennessee service area, and you would like to get those roaches out of your home before you start your holiday cooking, we’d be happy to assist you. You can probably live with cockroaches, but you and your family will be a whole lot healthier if you don’t. Reach out to Russell’s Pest Control for complete cockroach exclusion. Our team of educated pest specialists know what is necessary to exterminate these dirty bugs and seal them out of your home.