How Rodents Get Inside Eastern Tennessee Homes In The Winter

How Rodents Get Inside Eastern Tennessee Homes In The Winter

Do you consider your home to be secure? If you have locks on the doors and windows, outdoor lights, and possibly a security system or camera set up, you probably feel good about your safety. However, there are intruders lurking about this winter that won’t break in through the front door. If you’ve ever wondered how rodents get inside your Eastern Tennessee home, we have the answer.

Why Rodents Get Inside Eastern Tennessee Homes in the Winter

In the warmer months, rodents are not often a concern. You may see them outside once in a while, but they’re unlikely to get into your home because they don’t need to. So why do they enter homes in the winter? When the weather turns cold, they begin to look for warm shelter. Even if they’ve already found a relatively warm spot to nest, they may decide to move if the area where they currently live doesn’t offer a steady food supply. Chances are, your Eastern Tennessee home offers both shelter and food.

How Rodents Get Inside Eastern Tennessee Homes in the Winter

In order for rodents to make the transition from outdoors to indoors, several things must happen:

  • The outside of your home must be appealing enough to make them want to investigate further. A yard that has a lot of areas to hide, plentiful food, and easily accessible water sources will attract rodents.
  • Once rodents have made it into your yard, they will move closer to your home. If there are easy ways to access your roof or there are areas around your foundation that allow for entry, they will check them out and, most likely, end up inside your home.
  • Once inside, rodents choose a secluded spot to build their nests. Wall voids, attic spaces, and cluttered storage areas are all favorite spots for rodents.

How to Keep Rodents Out of Your Eastern Tennessee Home in the Winter

To prevent a rodent invasion, you need to start by making your property unappealing to rodents:

  • Keep your grass trimmed short.
  • Remove lawn debris and wood piles so there are fewer places for rodents to hide.
  • Cover garbage bins with tightly fitting lids.
  • Don’t leave pet food outside.
  • Remove bird feeders.
  • Make sure there is no standing water on your property.
  • Cut back tree limbs so they do not touch the exterior of your home.

You also need to make sure your home doesn’t have any obvious entry points. Smaller rodents, like mice, can fit through a hole the size of a dime, and all rodents have the ability to nibble on a small hole to make it big enough to squeeze through.

  • Cover or cap all obvious holes, such as chimneys, vents, and downspouts.
  • Check for and repair damaged roof shingles.
  • Inspect your foundation for cracks and holes, and fill any that you find.
  • Check for gaps around windows and doors, repairing those you discover.
  • Repair torn screens.

What to Do if Rodents Get Inside

Sometimes even our best precautions aren’t enough to stop rodents from getting inside. If they do, it’s important to call a pest management professional to help take care of the problem. Russell’s Pest Control can safely eliminate your rodent problem while also identifying how they were able to get inside in the first place, helping to prevent future infestations.

You can also save time by calling Russell’s to do the prevention work for you. Our Power Programs keep your home safe from over 30 pests. Give us a call to learn more.

Tips For Preventing Fall Rodent Infestations In Knoxville

Tips For Preventing Fall Rodent Infestations In Knoxville

Cooling temperatures bring mugs of hot chocolate, toasty warm campfires, and long-sleeved clothing for that desired sweater weather aesthetic. However, just as we are looking for warmth and peace of mind, rodents are doing the same. As the temperature outside drops, rats, and mice begin looking for potential heat sources and food sources. Your home happens to provide both of these things, as well as many nooks and crannies to squeeze into and hide.

There are several ways you can prevent rodents from entering your home this fall, here are just a few.

  • Rodents, like several other pests, are attracted to any food sources your home provides, whether that be inside or outside. Keeping your food sealed in plastic containers, sweeping your floors to get rid of crumbs, not leaving pet food outside, and making sure your trash bin is sealed tightly are just a few of the ways to reduce the number of rodents you attract to your home.
  • Outside areas that remain untrimmed are great hiding places for rats and mice. Leaving piles of wood around, not mowing your lawn, failing to trim tree branches and weeds away from your house, and even leaving children’s toys or other clutter in your yard provides ways for rodents to hide and eventually creep close enough to your home to invade it. Keeping your yard neat and uncluttered is a great way to prevent rodents from having the opportunity to infest your property.
  • Rats and mice are masters at finding the smallest cracks or tears that grant passage into your home. If left unchecked, window screens can accumulate rips and tears just from sticks and other debris that the weather blows around—which creates an opening for mice and rats to sneak inside. Cracks in the foundation of your home are another way rodents enter your home. By routinely checking to be sure these areas are secure, you greatly reduce the ways these pests can get in.

You may want to try and remove rodents from your home by yourself, however, if the prevention tips above have failed to keep them out of your home, eliminating these pests is best left to the rodent control experts here at Russell’s Pest Control. Rodents are a difficult pest to get rid of on your own. With our rodent elimination services, we have the skills required to make your pest problems vanish once and for all. Don’t let rodents ruin your autumn weather fun, contact Russell’s Pest Control for a free estimate today!

Why Rodents Enter Our Homes

Why Rodents Enter Our Homes

Winter is on its way, we can feel it in the air as it is getting colder outside. Unfortunately, pests are feeling the same temperature change and will be in a search for a warmer place to call home throughout the winter months. Besides warmth, these pests are in search of shelter to raise their young, as well as food and water to survive. These particular pests are rodents, like those mischievous mice and rascally rats that scurry about and skulk around the pantry foraging for food. And here’s the problem with rodents inside your house: they carry diseases, chew everything in sight, and cause damage to your home. Not a creature you want to have around.

Let’s start by talking about the diseases they can carry, like the deadly hantavirus, which can lead to hemorrhagic fever or acute respiratory failure. You and your family could be at risk for other diseases as well, like leptospirosis, lymphocytic disease, and salmonella as a result of a rodent infestation. Rodents can also bring parasites like mites, fleas, and ticks into your home that can affect the health of your family and pets too. On top of this, rodents are looking for food, and will contaminate anything they can get their claws into.

Since rodents have incisors that continuously grow, they chew incessantly to prevent overgrowth of their teeth. They can chew the legs of furniture, picture frames, books, clothing, wires, pipes, insulation, and much more. Normally the chewing would just damage single items, but if an electrical wire is chewed, it could spark a fire in your home. Likewise, if a plumbing pipe is chewed through, you could experience a lot of water damage.

So, how do you prevent rodents from entering your house in the first place? You will need to block off all entry points by caulking all gaps and holes around your foundation and exterior walls, the preferred method is to stuff a hole with steel wool and then caulk it, as rodents can chew through the caulk alone. You will also need to fix or replace all damaged vents, screens, chimney caps etc… Try to keep trees and bushes trimmed back away from your house and eliminate piles of wood and junk near your home. Your garbage cans should have tight-fitting lids as well. Inside your home, keep all of your food secure in containers with tight-fitting lids, and never use food that has ripped, torn or chewed packaging. You should also be on the lookout for rodent droppings that look like small black rice with tapered ends. As an extra precaution, you should clean up food and drink spills right away and repair leaky pipes and faucets.

If you already have an infestation, you should contact a professional pest control service in your area. If you live in the Knoxville and Eastern Tennessee area, call on Russell’s Pest Control for full-service pest management. Our year-round home pest control services effectively address all rodent activity to ensure proper eradication of the rodents and keep them away with a multi-step process. So, if getting rid of pests for good is what you are looking for, look no further. Russell’s Pest Control has solutions that will give you the peace of mind you need, that ensures you a rodent free home all year long.

What To Do, And Not Do, About Rodents In Your Home

What To Do

If you are hearing, or seeing, the evidence of rodents inside your home, this is not an issue to be taken lightly. The scritch-scratching sounds inside your walls, the tiny (or perhaps not so tiny) droppings you are finding in your cabinets, and the chew holes appearing in the Cheerios box are not things that should be ignored. Rodents are not only a nuisance to have around, they pose very real dangers to you, your possessions, your family, and even your pets.

Rodents are famous for foraging in filthy places, but they also forage in your kitchen. This means that they carry all sorts of disease-causing pathogens into your home and deposit them everywhere they roam. Rodents are known to transmit diseases, some of them fatal–as well as secondary pests, like ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease. And, rodents are a danger to your possessions as well. Since they constantly have to chew on things to wear down their ever-growing teeth, they will damage or destroy anything from treasured possessions to your whole house, if they accidentally chew on the right electrical wire.

If you have a rodent infestation, it is imperative you get professional help right away. Although some do-it-yourself rodent control strategies can get rid of some rodents, to completely eradicate these pests, so they don’t keep coming back, a pest control company is the way to go.

Why DIY rodent control doesn’t work

  • While many products will kill some rats and mice, killing all the rodents in a home can be tricky. And many products can be dangerous to humans or pets if not properly handled. At best, you can reduce your rodent population, at worst, you could end up with dead, rotting rodent carcasses inside your wall voids, which will only draw more pests into your structure. Many bugs are drawn to dead, rotting things.

  • Using chemical products can result in rodents picking up the chemicals on their fur and then tracking it around your pantries and food preparation areas.

  • While snap traps may catch some rodents, it is impossible to know if you have gotten them all. These critters have a threat avoidance instinct that will cause them to lay low for a while and grow their population to come back later when the threat is gone. If your family is dealing with flu-like symptoms, it may be rodent related, even if you think you’ve gotten rid of your rodents.

If you are hearing and seeing the signs of a rodent infestation, and you live in our East Tennessee service area, call or click today. With over 40 years experience in pest prevention and elimination, Russell’s Pest Control can make your home rodent-free with rodent control you can depend on. Life is better without rodents.

Rodent Awareness Week

Rodent Awareness Week

October 23rd-29th is rodent awareness week, this annual event comes at the perfect time to educate home and business owners about these invasive and dangerous pests. Rodents like mice and rats are a year-round problem, but during the fall and winter months, they are more motivated to enter your home or business to seek refuge from the colder weather as well as easy access to food and water. Russell’s Pest Control wants to make sure that you aware of the negative impacts that rodents can have on your home or business and why it is so important to protect both from these furry terrors.

Rodents will take every advantage given to them while trying to enter your home, a tiny crack in the foundation, a gap underneath an exterior door, a space found around a pipe entering into your home, or a hole in the roof line. Once rodents get into your home they tend to make themselves right at home, but we are warning you- rodents make terrible houseguests. Listed below are some of the reasons why rodents need to be eliminated from your home as quickly as possible!

  • They need to eat, which means that they are going to be eating the food you have stored in your kitchen and pantry areas, contaminating it with their saliva, urine, and feces.

  • They spread a host of dangerous diseases like Salmonella and the very serious Hantavirus.

  • Rodents are constantly chewing on items and can cause major structural damage within your home. They will chew through wires, pipes, drywall, insulation, flooring, and more. The damages that they cause can lead to fires, water leaks, and mold issues.

  • Rodents destroy personal items like books, clothing, pictures, and furniture.

Rodents don’t just invade family homes; they also enjoy invading commercial properties. Inside of a commercial facility they cause many of the same damages that they do in homes: structural damages, damage to personal items, damage to inventory, contaminate food; and they spread diseases that could potentially affect you, your employees, and customers. In a business however, rodents can cause a type of damage that may be even worse, damage to your business’s reputation. Just one customer spotting one rodent dropping or spying a mice running along the wall will cause them to not want to return and to tell their friends and family about the incident, causing people in the community to have a negative opinion about your business.

So now you know why rodents are such dangerous pests, what do you do to stop them? The best solution to any rodent or pest infestation is to put into place a year-round pest control program. At Russell’s Pest Control we offer both residential and commercial year-round pest control services to protect your property from the dangers that rodents bring inside with them. Our highly trained rodent control experts can safely and quickly solve current problems with rodents in your home or business and provide routine services to prevent future problems with them.

Don’t let rodents invade your home or business this fall, winter, or any other time of the year, keep them outside where they belong with the help of the rodent control experts at Russell’s Pest Control. Give us a call today to start protecting your property from rodents!

Winter Chill Forces Rodents And Other Small Pests Indoors

Winter Chill Forces Rodents And Other Small Pests Indoors

With cold weather and snow blanketing much of the country, homeowners aren’t the only ones seeking shelter indoors. Rodents are also looking for a warm place like our homes to escape the winter chill. Unfortunately, these small pests can cause more than just a headache for homeowners if they gain entrance inside.

Rodents can contaminate food sources and serve as vectors of many diseases, such as salmonella and the potentially fatal Hantavirus. Moreover, mice and rats can cause serious structural damage by chewing through insulation, wallboards, wood and electrical wiring.

It’s much easier to prevent an infestation than to get rid of pests after they’ve found a cozy retreat inside the home. The National Pest Management Association (NPMA) recommends the following tips to keep homes rodent-free this winter:

  • Seal cracks and holes on the outside of the home, including areas where utilities and pipes enter, using caulk, steel wool or a combination of both.

  • Replace loose mortar and weather stripping around the basement foundation and windows.

  • Screen vents and openings to chimneys.

  • Store food in airtight containers and dispose of garbage regularly.

  • Inspect items such as boxes, grocery bags and other packages brought into the home.

If you find rodent feces or hear sounds of scurrying in the walls, contact Russell’s Pest Control, and we’ll perform a free home inspection.

Rodents In Sevierville

Finally, some cooler weather! After a summer of particularly extreme heat, cold fronts have moved through East Tennessee. Lest the cooling temperatures put you off your guard against pest threats, I wanted to issue a pest control alert, and this particular warning is especially directed to our customers and friends in Sevierville. Let’s talk about the rodent threat that is rising in East Tennessee.

You may remember from our previous post about rodents that mice and rats begin to cause trouble in earnest during the fall. Cold weather often drives them inside where they can find comfort in your warm house because, let’s face it, once they’re inside, they’re only as cold as you are. However, this year’s heat may have raised the stakes for rodents and increased the problems for homeowners.

Mice and rats don’t like to be too hot. They dehydrate quickly, and rats are particularly dependent on reliable water sources for survival. This summer, Russell’s received phone calls about rodent problems, which is fairly unusual. The mice and rats were attempting to force their way inside because the heat was so extreme that they wanted to borrow your sink, walk-in shower, or leaking pipe to keep their families cool. Now that the evenings are becoming brisk, they are not at all motivated to move out.

So, why is this relevant for residents of Sevierville in particular? Well, Sevier County has just the environmental variety that mice and rats find attractive. Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are highly commercialized and feature dozens of restaurants and hotels. The presence of many humans in close quarters provides easy pickings for rodents. They hardly have to scavenge for food when so much is available in trash bins. Property owners in commercially-centered areas like Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge must constantly be on their guard against full-scale invasions from unwanted guests.

On the other hand, Sevierville also has acres and acres of peacefully remote wooded areas that make the Smokey Mountains so enjoyable. Unfortunately, woodlands are also a favorite of rodents. Mice and rats live in woods and fields; we just usually don’t see them there. However, if the field-dwellers are struggling to survive, a secluded, picturesque cabin is just the place for them. Rural Sevierville residents can be quickly overwhelmed by a rodent problem in the fall.

To top it all off, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, Kodak, and Townsend (though it’s in Blount County) are all host to many rental cabins. People from all over the country have cabins in the Great Smokey Mountains, which may only be occupied for a couple of weeks a year. Vacant structures without consistent pest control run a high risk of sustaining rodent damage. We’ve heard stories of mice creating large nests in mattresses, storage bins, and insulation, which the property owners only discovered on the first day of their planned vacations!

The moral of the story is that all residents of East Tennessee, particularly those in Sevier County, should be aware of the potential threat of rodents. Put down snap traps or glue boards in your vacant cabins. If you’re comfortable with the idea, read the labels of mouse baits and put them in areas where people and non-target animals can’t encounter them. Or, contact Russell’s Pest Control. We’ll monitor the situation four times a year, so you don’t have to worry about it.

Rodent Control For Messy Housemates

Our days are getting shorter, and the nights are getting colder. While you get out the quilts for the beds, bear in mind that other creatures are eager to put the finishing touches on their winter nests, too. The nest-builders that I mean are mice, and they’re already creating a problem for homeowners in East Tennessee.

Mice can be cute (reference attached photo for evidence), but they’re considered one of the most troubling pests for mankind. They don’t just want to share space with humans—they also want to share supplies, and they are famous for contaminating food and spreading diseases with their droppings and parasites. Consider these statistics about mouse activity that the National Pest Management Field Guide documented. If two mice inhabit a structure for six months, they will eat about 4 lbs. of food. They will also leave behind about 18,000 droppings and will expel 12 oz. of urine, particularly while marking their territory (which they do often). Not a very pleasant thought, is it? Now consider that mice can produce litters of 5-8 young every six weeks. Suddenly, the rodent problem has taken on a broader scope.

Mice aren’t like rats—they are naturally curious and are not suspicious of changes in their surroundings. This can work to your advantage. If you know you’ve got mice in a certain area, move around the objects nearby and then add a trap with food on it. The mouse will be eager to relearn the once-familiar environment and is more likely to fall prey to your rodent control measures. Another home remedy for getting rid of mice is to block up the extra space around your plumbing and electrical openings with steel wool or copper mesh. As rodents, their tendency is to chew through obstructions, but the metal will hurt them when they try. Copper is toxic to rodents, so it has even faster effects.

We encourage homeowners to remember that one mouse isn’t too big of a problem, but a mouse colony is a major issue. If you find evidence of mice or know that you’re in a high-risk area for them (like land surrounded by fields or near construction sites), take action immediately. If you’re busy and just can’t find space in your schedule to handle rodent control, click here to hire a professional who can carefully monitor for mice and eliminate them efficiently if they get inside.