Is Pest Control Needed In The Winter In Chattanooga?

0:02
Welcome to the volunteer rid a pest podcast. I’m your host, Mike Stewart. And today we have pest expert, Eric gardener from volunteer rid a pest, your pest experts in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Cleveland, Tennessee and surrounding areas. And today we’re going to talk about at the time of this recording, it’s coming up on the winter, fall and winter season. And you know, one of the questions I have for you, Eric is, you know, do I really need wintertime pest control? What type of pests are a problem during this time?

0:33
Well, here’s a common misconception, a lot of people think, well, it’s getting cold, the all the pests are going to die. And there’s just no bugs out during the winter. And actually, that’s just not correct. You know, the insects around that age. And they came back stronger than ever, every winter will have really cold days. But every spring, we still have bugs. So they don’t die through the winner, what happens they find a place to spend the winter and they go dormant. Now, a lot of different paths are a problem, we get calls in January and February for ants, for spiders for lady beetles for stinkbugs. For mice, you know, mice are really more active in the winter, because during the warm seasons, they’re happy to be outside and you know, feeding there’s plenty the food sources are plentiful. In the winter, however, the food sources are not plentiful. So they move into people’s homes. And then they set up residence there. So we get a lot more rodent calls. But those things are active all winter. And many times the problems with ants and different insects you see in April in May, they actually start in November in December when they find their way into your home when it gets cold.

1:43
So you know, what that tells me is that, you know, bugs are a year round problem. And in fact, I remember years ago, one of my colleagues talked to me about the fact that you’re right, the bugs go dormant, and especially like in things like firewood. And he said that, you know, when you bring firewood into your house, if you’re not careful and burn it right away. Those bugs living in that outdoor dormant home, there’s of the bark of the wood, they think it’s springtime, and they come to life, and they’re all over your house. So this makes a whole lot of sense. bugs can be a problem all year long. But here’s another concern of mine as a homeowner. You know, right now at the time of recording this. It’s a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. So why should I think about Pest Control during the pandemic? I mean, is it really safe to have a pest control professional come to my house come in my house? Well, how do you address those questions?

2:45
Well, and that’s an important question, because a lot of our customers are elderly people. And so we want to take care of our customers. So what we do, we take precautions, we’ve issued all of our technicians in 95 masks, and latex gloves, and hand sanitizer. So as they go from one place to the other, first of all, we recommend the insects, the majority of them come from the outside in, there’s some insects you can carry in and groceries like roaches, and different things like that. So it can happen, but most of the time they come from the outside in. So we want to treat the exterior of your home this time of year to prevent these insects from coming in getting under the siding coming in through cracks getting into your crawlspace and overwintering. If we do need to come inside your home, we’re going to put on our gloves, we’re going to use our mask. And we’re going to make sure that we don’t you know, take every precaution we can not to if we have been exposed not to contaminate you. So we’re not going to touch any surfaces with their bare hands, we’re going to have our mask on at all times. So we were going to take very seriously, we don’t want to spread anything we may have been exposed to. Bu