Summary: Thanksgiving is a time for enjoying delicious food and quality time with family, not pest invasions! This blog discusses the habits and diets of 5 food-loving pests, as well as the best ways to prevent them from ruining your holiday dinners. The included pests are: mice, pantry pests, roaches, ants, and spiders. Pointe Pest Control provides year-round pest protection for PNW homes and businesses.
One of the most popular traditions of the holiday season — besides eating our weight in baked goods — is gathering for a homemade dinner. It’s an age-old tradition to sit around the dinner table with friends and family members who we don’t always get to see, and enjoy a feast of comfort food that warms us up from the inside.
With Thanksgiving being tomorrow (already!), it’s safe to say that the time for planning these holiday dinners is here. Unfortunately, a certain type of guest is likely to invite themselves to these meals, and we’re not talking about your opinionated uncle. Pests are desperate to live in our homes during the winter months, so they do whatever it takes to get inside without us noticing.
Let’s talk about the 5 pests that try to invade our holiday dinners and learn about their preferences that attract them to our homes in the first place.
Mice
Mice are the largest pests on this list by a long shot, so you would think that they would be too obvious to slip by unnoticed. Rodents are actually sneakier than they seem, which makes their presence as a cold-weather pest pretty annoying. Mice like to be cozy while they build nests and reproduce in the most hidden corners of the house. Their favorite spots are behind large appliances, in crawl spaces, behind walls, and in idle boxes.
Since mice don’t hibernate, they need to eat consistently to keep their energy levels up. They’ll eat just about anything, so the dishes served at your holiday dinners would be a heavenly feast for these pests. Mice favor sweets and proteins, especially peanut butter, chocolate, and pet food. They scavenge in the kitchen and trash cans, then bring their findings back to their nest to feed their many children. It’s like their own (gross) holiday feast!
Pantry Pests
Holiday feasts use a massive amount of ingredients, which is where our next pests come into play. Pantry pests are tiny invaders of dried goods that we store in the pantry and cabinets. These pests generally have the same diet of dry foods that are kept at room temperature. In other words, pantry essentials that we need year-round are exactly what these pests want. Their favorites are pasta, flours, sugars, beans, rice, cereals, nuts, popcorn, cake mixes, and breads.
The good news is that pantry pests don’t spread diseases, but they do contaminate foods with their eggs and droppings. If you find any bugs in your dry goods, throw out the ruined food immediately. Some of the usual suspects include sawtoothed grain beetles, Indian meal moths, and rice weevils. They can live for close to a year in good conditions since they have everything they need in their home/food item. Pantry pests invade foods at every stage — factory, transport, storage, etc. — so keep an eye out for any creepy-crawlies in your food.
Roaches
One of the most vile pests in existence, cockroaches eat everything they can get their germ-filled hands on. Since they walk through garbage, sewage, and waste in search of food, the bacteria from those places is transferred to whatever they touch next — including our own food. They eat starchy organic items, but they will also eat grease, meats, and sweets. Salmonella, cholera, and dysentery are often spread by these gross specimens. Bacteria multiplies in their preferred damp and dark habitats, including bathrooms, laundry areas, kitchens, and storage areas.
Roaches are such a frustrating pest because they are sneaky enough that they can reproduce, forage, and build out their habitats under the cover of night. They can go a month without eating if they need to, so it can be difficult to tell if you have a roach problem when you’re busy with preparations for these holiday dinners. Roaches are drawn to forgotten crumbs and spills, and these can lead them to the motherlode of our actual food in the pantry if they’re not caught.
Ants
It’s nearly impossible to talk about food without mentioning the most infamous food pest of all: ants. Although they enjoy grease and sweets, ants eat essentially everything that humans do. Worker ants forage for food and lead their fellow workers to safe sources by leaving a trail of pheromones, or scent chemicals. Any food that’s open or in flimsy packaging is susceptible to an ant invasion. Baking essentials, cereals, chips, and pasta are typical targets.
Ants aren’t restricted to the pantry, as these opportunists will eat any crumb or spill they find. For instance, if you have little ones at your holiday dinners, the crumbs under their chairs are very appealing to hungry ants. One type of ant to keep an eye out for is the carpenter ant. It eats the same food as other ants, but this ant has the additional habit of chewing through damaged wood to create their intricate tunnels. Any wood that has moisture damage is the carpenter ant’s target, so check your home for any signs of damage.
Spiders
Spiders aren’t interested in the food at our holiday dinners, but they do have the same desire as the other pests: to live in our cozy homes. If your doors are constantly opening and closing for your guests, you might find a spider or two that snuck inside (sorry for the unnerving thought). Spiders usually hide in dark, dry spaces that are undisturbed by people and pets. Web-builders weave their webs to live on, while hunting spiders hide in enclosed spaces in between hunts.
These arachnids are definitely creepy, but most of them aren’t worrisome beyond that. You can just squish a spider that invited itself into your home and move on. But two venomous species are more cause for concern if you see them: black widows and brown recluses. Both like to hide in dark, isolated areas, and black widows have the advantage of being able to build a web. If you or anyone in your home is bitten by either spider, please seek medical attention immediately.
Keep Pests Off Your Guest List
Late fall and winter are popular times to enjoy a hot meal with our loved ones, whether it’s on a holiday or a random Wednesday. These dinners are much more enjoyable when we aren’t worrying about a pest infestation, so pest prevention is important this time of year. The key is to block pests out to keep them from enjoying the warmth of our homes rent-free.
Our top tips for preventing pests from invading your holiday dinners are:
- Inspect the exterior. Pests are small, so they don’t need a huge gap to get into the house. Check the exterior of the home for any cracks or holes that come from age, bad weather, or both. Seal cracks with waterproof caulk and stuff holes with steel wool or copper mesh before lining with caulk.
- Do the dishes. At the risk of sounding like your mother, we recommend staying on top of the dishes. Roaches, rodents, and ants love the residue on idle dirty dishes, and leaving them in the sink for days is an open invitation. Holiday dinners result in a lot of dishes, so try to do a little at a time to make it less overwhelming.
- Store food correctly. Between pantry pests and other hungry pests, it’s essential to store your dried goods in strong containers. Glass, acrylic, or thick plastic containers with airtight seals are the best at keeping pests out. Transfer food items that will stay in your pantry for a while, like baking ingredients, into these containers.
- Clean the floors. If your dinner guests leave their shoes on, this task is even more important. The dirt and crumbs are reliable food sources for many pests, like carpet beetles and roaches. Vacuum, sweep, or mop the floors about once a week, or more if you’re hosting often.
- Check window and door seals. The damp PNW weather is already upon us, so it’s a good idea to make sure your door and window seals are in top shape for the winter. If any seals are loose or broken, replace them with new weather seals. These keep the cold weather and tiny pests out of your home during the harsher seasons.
- Remove webs. Halloween is over, so it’s time to rid your home of any webs that still decorate the interior. Whether it’s a spider building its new habitat or using an old web as its home, you don’t want any webs inviting arachnids to move in. Remove any webs you find with a duster or the vacuum hose, and squash any displaced spiders you find.
Put Pest Protection On The Menu This Season
Holiday dinners served in a cozy home are hallmarks of this season. No matter how many people you invite to your table this year, we can safely say that pests are never on the guest list! The licensed, experienced technicians of Pointe Pest Control solve pest issues with the utmost efficiency and care. We inspect the property for all signs of pest activity, then use our observations to create a treatment plan that’s customized to solve your pest problems. We only use targeted treatments that we know are effective, rather than general chemicals that don’t do much. Contact us to learn more about our long-term solutions that keep the pests out of your holiday festivities!
Citations
Eaton, A. & Macccini, R. (n.d.). Kitchen pests [fact sheet]. University of New Hampshire Extension. Available at https://extension.unh.edu/resource/kitchen-pests-fact-sheet (Accessed on November 11, 2024).
Malinowski, M.K. & Ricigliano, D. (2022, October 3). Identifying common household insect pests. University of Maryland Extension. Available at https://extension.umd.edu/resource/identifying-common-household-insect-pests (Accessed on November 11, 2024).
What do cockroaches eat?. (n.d.). Raid. Retrieved November 11, 2024, from https://www.raid.com/en-US/education/bug-basics/what-do-cockroaches-eat
