Bugs, critters creeping into your homes to get relief from the heat

RALEIGH, North Carolina — Thanks to all the heat and humidity, many of us are finding some unwanted guests on our homes. Exterminators say pests are also looking for reprieve from the hot weather, and seeking refuge inside homes.

“Just like we don’t want to be outside in the heat, neither does anything else,” said Triangle Home Services Branch Manager Kellan McDiarmid.

Pest control companies are seeing an uptick in calls for service.

Triangle Home Services says its technicians are handling roughly a 30 percent rise as people are trying to get rid of pesky visitors.

An expert says to the lower chances of bugs getting inside, the number one things you can do is clean your gutters.

McDiarmid says ants and roaches, in particular, love living in gutters in between leaf litter.

He has other suggestions to the home.

“Making sure trees, shrubs, bushes stay trimmed away from the house that they’re not bridging over to the house. Making sure if you have a crawl space, making sure there’s no sort of moisture issues in the crawl space,” he said.

Handy Man Hardware Owner Dina Lusk says she’s selling lots of pesticides for ants, roaches and fruit flies.

She too is fighting off bugs these days.

“The little bitty ants, they love to come into the kitchen and the Terro here is a fantastic product for it,” said Lusk.

McDiarmid says the over-the-counter product work well to instantly kill a bug or for a short-term fix.

He said, “A lot of stuff is really heavy repellant and a lot of it doesn’t have any sort of residual effect.”

McDiarmid suggest to using commercial-grade stuff to get to the root of the problem.

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