Common Winter Pests to Watch Out for In Memphis & North Mississippi

Many pests can lurk around your home during the winter months in Memphis and North Mississippi.

But as the weather cools and you look outside, you might notice fewer insects buzzing about. It might even seem quiet out there – quiet enough to make you think you have nothing to worry about regarding bugs. Maybe this cooler weather chased them all away.

Unfortunately – and we hate to be the ones to tell you this – you’d be wrong. While some pests vanish or hibernate during winter, others are very tolerant to cooler temperatures. And they take any opportunity to sneak into your warm home to hide, nest, or even grow their pest families.

These common winter pests in Memphis and Northern Mississippi won’t hesitate to treat your home like their personal bed and breakfast if they can get inside:

• Rodents & Mice
• Roaches
• Ants
• Spiders
• Termites

Let’s talk about these more prevalent household pests in Memphis and how winter pest control can help eliminate them and prevent future infestations.

The Most Common Winter Pests in Memphis and North Mississippi

Like us, bugs and rodents seek warmth and protection from the elements during the cooler months. They want to feel safe and cozy; we can all relate.

Take a look at your home. It’s got some prize amenities that these pests rank as pretty important: warmth, water, shelter, and food.

And while you might think our milder winters might keep common Memphis pests at bay, the temperature swings from 60-degree days down to 50-degree degrees can cause pests to move around and change up their scenery as they search for warmer conditions. And your home looks incredibly inviting.

What are they looking for? Great places to hide from the changes happening outside. Rodents, for instance, can sense weather changes are coming before you do, and they are also pretty good at fitting through small spaces. They also like clutter, so if you’re a hoarder, that creates some great hiding spaces for rodents to nest in.

Common pests in Mississippi also don’t want to work for their food. And it’s so convenient for them when you have bags of food open and unsealed, pet food and bird seed left out, or even crumbs and spill residue left on your floors. Free lunch!

This is a big draw if you have a dank, damp basement. Moisture is like leaving the bar tab open for bugs.

Some things can bring pests closer to your home, too, such as firewood stored closer to 20 feet and trees and shrubs growing wild and unkempt near your windows and siding. If you have cracks and crevices near basement entry points, foundations, window wells, insulation, and siding, you also give pests a doorway inside.

Now that you know what brings bugs in, let’s talk about the household pests in Memphis that you’re most likely to see when you have a pest infestation.

Rodents and Mice

Rodents love shelter, water, and food – things your house has in abundance, unfortunately.

A mouse can squeeze through any hole that is one-quarter inch or bigger. So, you want to seal or repair any holes or cracks that give this common Memphis pest easy entry into your home, garage, or shed.

If you have a mice problem, setting snap traps in garage corners, enclosed attic spaces, and behind appliances can help. Place traps at right angles to walls with bait nearest the wall. You can also use glue traps in similar locations to trap mice.

Pest control services can scout for mice, remove nests or messes if they find any, and set up bait stations, which need to be placed properly to work well. Exterminators use bait stations that are pet- and tamper-proof to ensure they are safe for use in your home. They also place them properly and check them regularly to ensure they are intact.

Roaches

In Memphis, TN and North Mississippi, there are primarily three main species of cockroaches: the American cockroach, the oriental cockroach, and the German cockroach.

Cockroaches like food, water, humidity, warmth, and safe breeding spaces. They are attracted to things like dirty dishes in your sink, garbage left out, crumbs on the floor, pet food, and leftover food in containers.

Store-bought baits and traps are rarely effective.

The winter pest control methods a professional company will use will vary depending on your home and your problem. It starts with an inspection. Your exterminator will examine your kitchen, bathroom, closets, basement, and attic. This will help determine your infestation level so they can develop a treatment plan.

A small infestation might be taken care of in a week or two, while a larger infestation could take a month or more.

Once the main interior infestation is taken care of, your pest control pro will return quarterly to perform exterior perimeter applications to keep cockroaches out.

Ants

Ants are typically attracted to sugars, crumbs, and uncovered foods. For instance, if you don’t have food in sealed containers, that’s an ant magnet. Once ants find your food, they message their worker ant friends, letting them know they found the jackpot.

That’s when you can find swarms of ants coming into your home to grab some dinner for the rest of their colony.

Lawn & Pest Solutions professionals like to start with baits to control this common winter pest. This non-repellant ant control product hides a protein or sugar source as bait, so the ants think these pieces are food and then take them back to their colonies.

This helps spread the insecticide to the queen and knock out any bigger ant infestations and the source of your main ant problem.

If necessary, the next stop is contact insecticide, but baits can usually help us avoid using this.

Then, exterior barrier treatments can help keep ants out because the product includes a smell or taste that ants don’t like. They immediately go in another direction as they near your home and come in contact with the barrier treatment.

Spiders

The wolf spider is a common pest in Mississippi you might see coming inside when temperatures drop.

Some others you can find in your home include yellow house spiders, cobweb spiders, and jumping spiders. Yellow house spiders with quarter-inch length, yellow-green bodies are fast crawlers. Cobweb spiders are pretty small; they build webs to catch insects. Jumping spiders are hairy and black – you’ll find them on ceilings and moving in short, fast jumps.

All of these spiders like to move indoors when it becomes cooler outside. Spiders come inside through webs they create right outside your entrances near lights.

A pest control professional will look at your home and determine where spiders are coming in. Once they do that, they will seal doorways and windows to ensure they stay out. This involves filling in any holes or gaps around seals and any other entry points into your home with caulk to deter spiders from entering.

Termites

Termites can be active in your home all year long, but they are known to swarm around April during the increasingly warm weather and increased rainfall. This common Memphis pest loves moist environments.

Termites swarm when they search for mates and establish a new colony. Colonies typically don’t swarm until they’ve become established, which can take about three years.

Termites travel through mud tubes, one-eighth-inch thick tubes that shelter termites as they travel between their underground colonies and your home to find wood to eat. These mud tubes typically extend over foundation walls or support beams.

At Lawn & Pest Solutions, we offer treatment using the Sentricon System. As Certified Sentricon Specialists, rather than pumping gallons of termiticide around your home, we place stations that contain termite bait around the home and monitor them for termite activity.

Banish Common Pests in Memphis & North Mississippi For Good

Pests are no joke once they enter your home.

As you embark on the cooler months and look around your home for signs of pests, you may want to contact professional pest control in Memphis and North Mississippi.

Give Lawn & Pest Solutions a call. We can conduct a general pest inspection and look for common entry points, alert you to problem areas, or devise a plan for any infestations we find. Then, we can do a perimeter pest control treatment that acts as a barrier to keep bugs out.

Noticing any pests in your home? Want to learn more about our pest control services in Memphis and North Mississippi? Get started today with a free quote. We’ll review your options together so you can make a great choice. Then you can just sit back and enjoy your home -- without the unwanted visitors.