If there is one question that is heard from people considering a move to the beautiful American Southwest, it is how to keep scorpions out of your home. The reality is that, yes, Arizona is chock full of scorpions, but since they do most of their hunting and scavenging at night time, you could theoretically live in the greater Phoenix area for years and never even stumble across one. They tend to scurry (fast) away from humans and when it comes to picking a home, they prefer quiet and solitary to underneath your dining room table. However, there are certain steps you can take to help prevent a random scorpion from finding its way into your home.
Make Your Home Secure
First off, you’ll want to make your home as secure as possible. If you’re new to the Phoenix area, you’ll understand the importance of this simply because it helps keep precious air conditioned air inside and scorching summer temperatures outside. Check every window and every door and make sure screens are fitted tightly and there are no tears anywhere. Scorpions are small creatures and can wiggle through even the tiniest space, so if you can fit a dime into a hole or crack, a scorpion could probably get through there.
Remove Hiding Places When Possible
Scorpions prefer dark, isolated and tight spaces to hang out during the daytime and come out at night. Scorpions can be hard to see because of their coloring and can easily blend into the carpet or throw rugs or even other flooring with light tans and brown colorings. It is especially important to shake your shoes before slipping your foot into the shoe, even more, important for those of you that leave your shoes by the door inside the garage or just outside before you enter into your home.
The first step in keeping scorpions away from your property altogether is to take away common hiding places. Harborage, or where the scorpion is living, is an important key to controlling a scorpion infestation. If you have a firewood pile it is important that you keep it as far away from the home as possible, and that you don’t bring the wood inside the home or garage to store it, as the scorpions love to hide out in the voids between the wood, as well as brick piles, excessive storage, cardboard boxes, junk awaiting a trip to the dump or even piles of laundry left on the floor.
Organization is Your Friend
You can help to deter this by cleaning regularly, organizing storage, and ensuring you don’t have build-ups of any of these items where scorpions can make a home. This regular cleaning and general organization will also help to deter ants, bed bugs and many other household pests. You can always call your Phoenix pest control experts to inspect your home if you think a scorpion control problem already exists.
One of the primary reasons why Phoenix homeowners and even commercial buildings in the Phoenix area come down with an all-out scorpion infestation is if your property, whether home or business, is rife with scorpion food. The average desert scorpion feeds on spiders, crickets and other soft shelled insects, and this would make your property very attractive to a scorpion because it has a well-established food supply for them. If you are finding these bugs in and around your home, you are setting yourself up for a bigger, and far more painful, problem.
Contact a local Phoenix exterminator to have these problems taken care of today. It is far more costly to deal with a serious scorpion infestation than to maintain a general pest control service on a monthly or every other month basis.
If all of this sounds like something you don’t want to take on alone, call the Phoenix pest control experts at Invader today for professional advice on how to make your home a danger zone for scorpions.