3 Tips to Prevent Rodent Damage to Your Home
Winter brings a lot of challenges to homeowners. One challenge is preventing rodent damage as the little pests find their way into your home to keep warm for the winter. Here, you'll find a few tips to help prevent the intrusion from becoming a full-blown invasion causing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in damage to your home.
1. Hire a Pest Control Specialist
The absolute best way to ensure that your home is well-protected from pests is to hire a pest control specialist to inspect and treat your home at least once each year. Preventing the invasion is the best way to minimize the damage to your home. A professional will be able to quickly identify any areas that would potentially provide easy access to rodents. Once identified, repairs can be made to keep the rodents out and traps set to capture those who have already made it into your home.
2. Use Peppermint as Natural Prevention
Rodents and bugs detest the smell of peppermint. Rather than filling your home with poison to kill the rodents, you can use cotton balls coated with peppermint oil to keep the rodents out of the areas that they'd typically be found, such as your food pantry, basement, and attic. During the spring, you can plant peppermint around the perimeter of your home and it'll naturally keep the rodents from coming near the home—it will also help with bees and other insects that could become an issue at some point.
3. Store Pet Food Properly
One thing that will draw in the rodents is the smell of pet food. Pet food should never be stored with your people food, nor should it be stored in just the bag that it comes in. Pick up an air-tight bin to store the pet food. This will do two things: prevent the smells from inviting the rodents into the house and keep the rodents from contaminating the pet food and putting your pets at risk.
The minute you find the first mouse dropping, get on the phone and contact local pest control services. That is the first sign that the invasion has begun. The darker brown the dropping, the fresher it is. If the dropping is light in color, it's been there for a while and may not mean that the rodents are currently living within your home. Let the professionals help you protect your home and your health from the rodents that want to take shelter in your home for the winter.
