Pest control help for your home and garden

*this is a collaborative post that we hope helps with dealing with pest control issues you might have*

Pest control is not a cheerful topic. If your home is your castle there are enough threats out there for you to want to make it a fortress, particularly around this time of year. Christmas trees, bulging Christmas stockings and glittering piles of presents can attract the attention of thieves and burglars so we make sure that we double lock our doors and that our burglar alarms are working. Unfortunately, ne’er do wells aren’t the only ill intentioned entities trying to get into your home. All year round, there’s a menagerie of malice that can creep through the tiniest of cracks in your house’s armour and wreak havoc with your home and your health. Here we’ll look at some of the creepiest of crawlies that will try and infiltrate your home this coming winter, and all year round.

Cute? No, actually they can be a real pest!

As you make your festive preparations make sure that drunken inlaws are the only household pests getting into your home.

Dry Rot

Combinations of wet winters and warm summers create the ideal conditions for this irksome fungus to invade your home and eat through the parts of the wood in your home that give it its strength and integrity. The trouble with dry rot is that if left unchecked it can spread with alarming speed across your home, making the wood brown and brittle and structurally unsafe. Dry rot treatment is left to a professional as it needs a trained eye to ensure that all traces of the fungus are destroyed. You can find advice on identifying dry rot here.

Termites

Though they’re traditionally associated with American homes, termites are active in certain areas of the UK and have been identified in numerous parts of the country including North devon and the Midlands. They are active all year round and can create extensive structural damage to your home. They may be known as nature’s architects, but they’re also some of nature’s most aggressive demolitions experts.

Squirrels

They may look cute and fuzzy but non native grey squirrels are notoriously aggressive creatures who have virtually decimated the indigenous red squirrel population through a combination of aggressive breeding, eating their food source and carrying the squirrel parapox virus which is fatal to red squirrels. Such is the damage they have done to the British ecology that it is illegal to release a grey squirrel found in your home back into the wild. Conversely, it is illegal to destroy a red squirrel or cause damage to their habitat.

Grey squirrels are known to try to infiltrate homes in colder months and can be aggressive when confronted. Consult a specialist pest controller if you have signs of a squirrel infestation.

Wasps

We all know that bees are essential to our ecosystem and that we all need to make an effort to ensure that their numbers are sustainable. Wasps, on the other hand are… just awful. They have Darth Vader faces and chase you when you run away from them. While drone wasps will die off in the colder months, the queens will find a dry place to hibernate before building her nest there when the weather gets warmer. This place may be your cellar, basement, garage or shed so be sure to consult an expert if you see signs of wasp infestation.

Pests can be PEST but if you act fast when you suspect you have a problem, pest control can be managed safely and efficiently so you can get pest free as quickly as possible. Don’t wait for the problem to get worse.