What’s that skittering across your front lawn and slithering up your front steps? Could it be giant spiders, rabid rodents, massive hissing cockroaches, or trick-or-treaters?! It’s Halloween, a time to celebrate the scary side of South Florida! On October 31st, it’s fun to see little ones dressing up as spiders, mice, and insects on your front porch or neighborhood, as long as the real insects do not invade your home!

Scratching and clawing in walls

Do you hear scratching sounds in your walls? It’s probably not bats in your belfry, but most likely mice or rats that have moved into your wall voids for the fall and winter. Notice anything else, such as squeaking sounds or tiny footsteps running across your attic floor? Ok, so your house might be haunted, but again, it’s possibly rodents running across your attic floor. Because rodents are nocturnal, they move about at night, in search of food. Notice any footprints in your pantry or chewed bags of dried goods? These are other signs that mice or rats are living in your home. If you suspect that there’s rodent activity in your home, the time to act is now! Rodents reproduce at super-fast rates and are capable of transmitting various diseases, along with ticks, fleas, and other pests.

A word to the wise

Contact a professional pest control company, such as Hulett Environmental Services to handle your rodent situation. After a FREE pest inspection, trained technicians strategically place baits and traps in areas with evident rodent activity, to reduce rodent populations. Catch something out of the corner of your eye crawling around in your home. It might give you the heebie-jeebies, but could it be roaches?

Skittering across your kitchen floor

When you turn on the lights in your kitchen, do roaches scatter? Resilient and fast on their feet, roaches can adapt to almost any environment you throw at them. Talk about creepy! Roaches can run up to three miles per hour as they scurry across your floor to hide. Roaches not only possess an inherent scary factor, but these pests carry many diseases and food-borne pathogens. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, “Cockroaches contain a protein that is an allergen for many people…The body parts, saliva, and waste of cockroaches are allergens”, the AAMA said. “Even dead cockroaches can cause allergic reactions.” Roaches can also trigger asthma attacks in children who are allergic to these pests. Roach issues will need the expertise of a professional pest management company and professional strength products, to eliminate a roach infestation that is in full swing. You can avoid cockroaches by making your home less attractive to them with the following:

  • Wiping down countertops, as well as all food prep and dining surfaces
  • Vacuuming or sweeping floors after meals and snacks
  • Washing dishes and clearing all food scraps to a tight-fitting trash receptacle after each meal
  • Storing all open food containers, pet food, and dried goods in glass, metal, or hard plastic containers
  • Decluttering your home and yard
  • Disposing of stored cardboard boxes

Tunneling into your home or lurking in your wood

You guessed it, termites! One of the terrible things about termites is that they can be in your home doing their damage for a while until anyone notices. Generally invading homes through wood to ground contact or by flying from a nearby infested structure, native subterranean and drywood termites may take a while to damage your home or be found, however, aggressive and invasive Asian and Formosan subterranean termites with their massive colonies tunnel their way into your home and can quickly damage wood they can get their little teeth into. This includes trees, utility poles, crawl spaces, attics, and subflooring, along with floors, doorways, fascia, and other wooden features in your home. Traveling back and forth through mud tubes, voracious worker termites can cause major damage to your home.

Signs of termite damage include:

  • Floors and walls that look warped, blistered, or water damaged
  • Hollow-sounding wood surfaces
  • Surfaces that you can easily poke a hole into, with a screwdriver
  • Piles of “frass” or six-sided drywood termite excrement
  • Mud tubes running up the sides of your home or nearby trees

If you suspect you are experiencing termite activity in your home, contact a professional pest control company, such as Hulett Environmental Services, at your earliest convenience to schedule a FREE pest inspection. After your pest inspection, our technicians will recommend an appropriate treatment for your termite problem. Offering a broad spectrum of proven termite control services and treatments, our technicians will target results to eliminate termite colonies and establish a protective barrier around your property.

These services include:

  • Liquid Defense Termite Treatments
  • Termite Baiting Systems
  • No Tent Termite Controls
  • Tent Fumigation
  • Termite Prevention

The tangled web we weave

What about those eight-legged terrors that wrap up their prey in their intricate webs? Thankfully, the brown recluse, black widow spiders, wolf spiders, and more typically only bite when they feel threatened or are disturbed from their dark, quiet habitats. As a matter of fact, spiders’ prey on many insects on your property, including cockroaches, earwigs, flies, mosquitoes, and other hapless insects that wander into their webs. Regardless, most people understandably do not want spiders in their homes. Excessive spider webs in your home can be off-putting and signal an insect infestation in your home. Contact a professional pest control company for a FREE pest inspection and determine a plan to eliminate pests from your home and property!

At Hulett, we wish our South Florida neighbors a safe, healthy, and Happy Halloween! However, should you suspect your worst Halloween insect scares have come to life and are haunting your home, just call Hulett!