Pest Control Services: Common Household Pests

What are the most common household pests?

• Flies
• Termites
• Rodents

 

The foremost reason why pest control services exist is to get rid of pests that are found in the household. These pests are essential to the balance of the ecosystem, but when they’re found within homes, they’re nothing more than nuisances.

Bear in mind, however, that when left on their own, these pests can do more than just annoy you now and then. In fact, some of them are capable of sabotaging your food, destroying your gardens, bringing dangerous diseases, and even inflicting severe damage to your home. The best thing you can do to prevent these pests from overwhelming your home is to simply keep things as clean and tidy as possible.

You should also make sure that your home doesn’t have a lot of entrances for them by repairing torn screens, sealing cracks in the walls and foundations, and outgoing pipes and vents. However, even with these practices, you’ll almost always find at least a few of these common household pests in your home. Take a look at this list of the most common household pests!

 

Flies

These are the most common types of pests around the world that are found in and around homes. Often, they’re just huge nuisances, especially if there’s a swarm of them in an area. Most people would dismiss them as just being incredibly annoying because of their buzzing sound, however, the most dangerous thing about them is their potential as disease carriers.

House flies have a short lifespan, but within that lifespan, they can land on so many kinds of surfaces—mostly food, trash, feces, and other decaying substances. When they do so, they stick more than a hundred different pathogens to them—most of which can cause serious diseases such as tuberculosis and salmonella.

These can then be transmitted when the flies land on food that people will then eat, not to mention these flies would relieve themselves constantly whenever they land on surfaces.

 

Termites

These bugs are arguably the most destructive among all the household pests. They are well-known for attacking and feeding on the lumber that is used to build houses and structures. That said, they tend to attack books, furniture, and some food products.

Queens would usually lay thousands of eggs in a single day—leading to exponential growth in their colony and damage to your home. One of the most common signs that you’re experiencing a termite infestation is when you see swarms of small winged insects or find tunneling, darkening, or blistering in wood. You will need pest control services in order to remove the termite infestation. However, there are also a few things that you can do to prevent termites from ever invading your home.

First, you should keep wood at least 12-inches away from the ground. Properly ventilate the structure so that it doesn’t retain moisture. You can also make use of wood that is rather resistant to termites such as redwood and white oak.

 

Rodents

In the Philippines, this would pertain mainly to rats and mice. Though mice are not as unappealing as rats, they’re very much a pest in your home. They won’t usually be out and about nibbling on your furniture, food and such. However, they will constantly leave droppings and urine all over your home. When left unattended, this will lead to a terrible smell that you’ll have to take time to search and clean.

Rats, on the other hand, can inflict more physical damage on your home. They usually eat any of your food products, gnaw on wood and wires. All of which could lead to a number of costly fixes. But aside from structural damage, rats are also disease carriers that can bring about salmonellosis, rat bite fever, and typhus.

You have to make sure that you control the population of mice and rats as soon as you know that your home has them. Keep all your food closed off in containers and away from the reach of these rodents. You should also make sure that you seal away any gaps of more than one-quarter inch with sturdy materials such as steel wool or sheet metal—things that rodents won’t be able to gnaw their way through.

If that’s not enough, you can resort to setting up traps or poisoning them. At the end of the day, it would be better if you were just to hire pest control to deal with them.

 

Key Takeaway

There are numerous types of pests within every household, all of which are attracted to different things but mostly food. In order to keep them in check you have to know about them, their habits, and how you can get rid of them.

The three mentioned above are some of the most common household pests that everyone will usually have to deal with at some point in their life. When that happens, it’s better to just avail the services of pest control instead of doing measures blindly and without guidance.