What Mice Are Looking For

What Mice Are Looking For

Are you hearing strange noises in your walls? Have you discovered little black pellets in the back of your food cabinet? Are there tiny footprints in the dust on your pantry shelves? It wouldn’t be surprising. This is the time of year when mice enter homes to escape the bitter cold of winter. But those cold temperatures aren’t the only reason mice come in. Besides warmth, here are some of the things mice look for inside your home.

Safety

When those little, furry intruders breach your exterior walls, the first thing they’re going to notice is that it is safer inside your home. Mice like confined spaces that give them protection. In nature, they’ll hide in a tree, log, rock crevice, or a hole in the ground to keep birds from swooping down and carrying them away. Your wall voids are the perfect hiding place.

Quiet

These are skittish creatures. In your home, they’re going to settle in locations that are secluded, like your attic, storage room, pantry, basement, or wall voids. When they hide in these areas, they can get into stored boxes, taint food, damage insulation and other items, and leave their urine and feces everywhere.

Something To Eat

Your home is filled with food options. Mice have teeth that allow them to get into cardboard or paper packaged foods. They nibble on remnants left on plates. They can leap as far as 2 feet into the air and gain access to your trash. They’re happy to dine on leftover pet food, and bread that is not left inside a bread box is fair game. These are only some of the many food resources your home can provide a mouse.

Dark

Mice are mostly nocturnal. And your home has the perfect places for these critters to explore at night. When they do, they’ll spread bacteria and disease in your home, and carry ticks, fleas, mites, lice, or some other parasite to every corner of your home.

Since your home has a lot of things mice look for, when mice get in, they don’t usually leave. Reach out to Russell’s Pest Control, if you’re in our Tennessee service area, for industry-leading mouse and rat control. We offer one-time service and ongoing rodent control as part of our year-round pest service for residential customers. For more information, or to establish service for your Tennessee home, drop us a line. Our QualityPro Certified team looks forward to assisting you.

Tis The Season For Pantry Pests

Tis The Season For Pantry Pests

Well, the holiday season is approaching fast, and soon we will be gathering in kitchens to prepare fantastic feasts and delicious desserts for ourselves and our loved ones. There is so much more cooking and baking to do than usual as you pull out the treasured recipes again, and it is especially fun creating food traditions with children. You will want to plan ahead, not only for the menus and recipes but for the ingredients too. You may already have everything you need in your pantry, but some of those ingredients might have been there awhile and might contain some nasty pantry pests. Nothing could be worse than reaching for some important ingredients only to find it has been contaminated with pests, causing you to delay your baking for another day.

You should always check your pantry before you plan to use any food that has been stored there. These foods include all dry cereal, pasta, flour, spices, crackers, seeds, nuts, and fruit. Foods stored in paper are particularly at risk for contamination from pantry pests. Some of these pests are grain moths, Indian meal moth, rice weevils, drugstore beetles, tobacco beetles, and flour beetles. Sometimes these pests come into homes already inside the packaged foods, but they can also come in from outside sources. Even if your house is spotlessly clean, pantry pests can still become a problem. Usually, the early larval stage of the pest will spend much of its time in the stored food. During the pupal stage, they will stay close by to the source in cracks, corners, and packaging. The adults will venture further away from the food source, and in favorable conditions, breed and create several generations each year. Once you have discovered an adult pantry pest it’s almost certainly too late, your food will have already been contaminated and will need to be thrown away.

In order to avoid pantry pests this holiday season you will need to:

  • Inspect food on a regular basis
  • Keep food in containers with tight lids
  • Clean your kitchen and pantry shelves regularly
  • Buy foods that have packaging that does not have rips or holes
  • Keep old and new food separate
  • Throw away old and contaminated food
  • Thoroughly clean empty containers before putting new food in them
  • Keep kitchen and pantry food areas dry

Now is the perfect time to consider year-round pest control to eliminate the possibility of spoiling the holidays. DIY pest control can certainly make a difference in many cases, but with the holiday rush and the challenge of eliminating every last pest that could lay eggs and begin the process all over again, consider an alternative that will free you up to focus on the joys of the season rather than the pests in your seasoning. Russell Pest Control in Knoxville and Eastern Tennessee offers effective pest control solutions for household pests including pantry pests. We are a full-service pest management company and know how to apply proven solutions in a personalized treatment plan. Just give us a call today for more information about our year-round pest control program, and how we can solve your pest problems and prevent them from ever being an issue again.

Avoid Thanksgiving Bed Bugs

Avoid Thanksgiving Bed Bugs

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and you know what that means; this is the time of year when we focus on the things we are thankful for. It is important to take this time to remind ourselves that we are surrounded by good things. Whether it is giving thanks for something small, like the smell of french toast in the morning, or something big, like a new job opportunity, there is something satisfying about taking a moment to take notice of the good things in life. And, there are a lot of things to be thankful for. Sadly, bed bugs aren’t one of them. If you agree, take a moment to familiarize yourself with these bed bug prevention tips.

When Having Guests Over For Thanksgiving

  • Learn what bed bugs look like. Recognizing a bed bug can alert you to an infestation, and prevent an infestation from occurring. Bed bugs may be as small as 1 mm and pale in color or they may be as much as 1.5 mm and rusty-brown in color. If they have had a blood meal, they will be bloated and have a brighter red coloring in their abdomen. This is quite noticeable with tiny pale bed bugs.

  • Once you know what bed bugs look like, do a search for these bugs in locations that your guests will stay. Also, look for secondary evidence of bed bugs: black streaks, tiny black droppings, dried blood stains, shed insect casings, or tiny white eggs. You’ll find these in seams, creases, nooks, and hidden places, especially in areas where a bed or couch is present.

When Travelling For Thanksgiving

  • If you’re going to be staying somewhere along the way, check bedbugregistry.com to see if a report of bed bugs has been filed.

  • Know what bed bugs look like and teach everyone in your family, so you know one when you see one.

  • Always do a quick inspection for bed bugs and signs of bed bugs no matter where you stay.

  • Bed bugs are attracted to clothing after we’ve worn them. Put laundry in a plastic bag while you’re on your vacation, and wash all your laundry on the hottest temperature when you get back.

These tips should help you avoid bed bugs this Thanksgiving. But bed bugs can invade your home any time of the year. If you ever see bed bugs or the signs they leave behind, reach out to Russell’s Pest Control for immediate assistance. Bed bugs are extremely hard to get rid of without an education in pest management. You can trust the bed bug control experts at Russell’s to help you resolve your issue quickly, and get you back to being bed bug-free.

Simple Spider Prevention Tips

Simple Spider Prevention Tips

Whether you are afraid of spiders or not, nobody wants to live with spiders in their home. Even those who aren’t necessarily fearful of the creepy, eight-legged creatures, most would say that they would rather not share their morning shower or watch evening TV with a spider hanging out in the corner. For those of us in Knoxville, the spiders that come into our homes are not only creepy but they can potentially be dangerous as well.

The most common types of spiders in Knoxville are the house spider, the black widow spider, the brown recluse spider, and the wolf spider. Common house spiders are yellow-white in color and have dark stripped markings on their bodies and legs. These spiders are a more of a nuisance—creating webs and crawling along your walls. They aren’t dangerous because their venom isn’t poisonous.

The black widow spiders are recognized by their black color with a red “hourglass” figure on their backs. A black widows venom is poisonous and attacks the nervous system of a human that has been bitten. Most know the black widow’s reputation as being deadly, however, death is very rare. It’s important that you seek medical attention as soon as you have been bitten to prevent serious injury.

Another poisonous spider is the brown recluse. These spiders are various shades of brown and are easily identified by the violin-shaped pattern on the top of their body. Also unique to them is their three pairs of eyes that are arranged in a semi-circle pattern. Brown recluse spiders don’t usually bite unless it’s during the process of being squashed or if being held. The bite will become infected and may cause fever and trouble sleeping. As with the black widow, please seek medical attention if bitten.

Last is the wolf spider, which are dark brown with light brown or yellow markings/stripes on their bodies. Their eyes are aligned in an odd way: four small eyes in the bottom row, two large eyes in the middle row, and two medium-sized eyes on the top. Wolf spiders don’t use webs to catch their prey—they hunt down and chase them. Despite this predatory nature, they are not aggressive towards humans. They will usually run and hide if they feel threatened. If they do bite, their venom isn’t strong enough to cause serious harm.

None of these spiders sound like anything you would want living in your home. Preventing these spiders from entering our homes is key. A few simple preventative measures that you can take on your own include blocking or sealing openings that spiders can fit through, taking care of your property including removal of woodpiles or leaves, installing door sweeps, and removing their webs.

If you want to guarantee that your house is protected you can call Russell Pest Control. Russell Pest Control has been protecting homes for over 45 years and knows the absolute safest, effective, and efficient techniques to keep spiders out of your home. With their year-round pest control plans, you receive scheduled visits that allow for protection all throughout the year. Their year-round plans also include a pest-free guarantee, meaning they promise that no spiders will be joining you for family dinner.