One reason of many to hire a Post Falls - Spokane mouse exterminator is due to your risk of getting infected with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS).
Eating food contaminated with mouse saliva, urine or droppings can get you really sick or cause death. Though uncommon, King County reports seven cases of Hantavirus since 1997.
We might assume we're safe if we've never had direct contact with a rodent. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There are countless ways your food can get contaminated.
The goal of this article is to teach Spokane area homeowners like you how to protect your food and your family from a food-related rat and mice infestation.
How Your Food Gets Contaminated From Pests
- A rat, mouse, or roach chews its way inside food packaging. While it only eats a small portion, it can leave behind tainted material. These pests also create small holes so that you can breathe in the dust when you move items like a bag of flour or rice.
- Rats, mice, and cockroaches contaminate countertops when they run across them. Food that comes into casual contact with the countertop will become contaminated. Be diligent about wiping surfaces down with an anti-bacterial spray before allowing food to touch them.
- Rats, roaches, and mice can scamper over clean dishes in your sink or cabinets, or brush across clean pots and pans. They don't necessarily leave visible evidence of their passing when they do so. Watch for mouse poop in cabinets and drawers.
- Ants can be vectors of foodborne disease, carrying bacteria and other microorganisms in their feet and mandibles that contaminate food.
- Pantry pests like ants, silverfish, moths and beetles can make their way into unopened paper and cardboard packages, where they feed and reproduce.
While you can take steps to mitigate these dangers, you shouldn't have to. Ideally, you'd never share space with these pests. Count on Croach® Pest Control for pantry pest, insect, rat, and mouse extermination for Spokane-Post Falls homeowners.
Rodents Like Mice and Rats
Rodents carry over 35 diseases, including Hantavirus, Leptospirosis, Tularemia, and the Black Plague, which never really went away.
They don't just contaminate food. They can contaminate the very air we breathe. Rats leave droppings in the vents. Some of those particles get into the air supply.
A Croach® mouse exterminator is trained and practiced to remove a rodent infestation from your Spokane home.
Cockroaches
Cockroaches can spread multiple diseases, including cholera, dysentery, gastroenteritis, giardia, leprosy, listeriosis, salmonellosis, and typhoid fever.
Contamination via cooking utensils, cutlery, crockery, or contaminated surfaces is the most common way to contract cockroach-borne diseases.
Worse, if you physically see even a single one, hundreds are probably running around where you can't see them. This includes inside closed cabinets and drawers. Pest control services will help keep your home pest-free.
Pantry Pests
House ants generally are considered to be nuisance pests. They are tenacious and a challenge to exterminate. Ants carry less risk of contaminating your food than rodents and cockroaches, however, they still can transmit diseases.
Pantry pests, like silverfish, Indian meal moths, carpet beetles, and warehouse beetles hitchhike into your home with your groceries. There they colonize your pantry, wrecking your sugar, flour, pasta and other ingredients with larva and feces.
Keep Your Home Safe With A Local Insect and Mouse Exterminator
Take these steps to keep food safe in your home.
- Cleaning: Wash your hands before, during, and after food preparation. Rinse fruits and vegetables well before you eat them. Wipe down countertops, cutting boards, utensils, and other food prep items with hot, soapy water.
- Cross-contamination: Keep raw meat, eggs, and seafood separate from other food while grocery shopping, and during storage and preparation.
- Cooking: Use a food thermometer to ensure meat is cooked to a high enough temperature to kill germs and bacteria.
- Refrigeration: Store perishable food in the frig within two hours; sooner if it's a warmer environment. Never thaw food on the counter. Instead, thaw frozen food in the frig, under running cold water, or in the microwave.
- Storage: Store your food in airtight sealed containers that pests cannot rip open or chew through.
Your Croach® mouse exterminator first implements exclusion techniques around the exterior of your home to help prevent rodent and insect access. Next, we'll identify the types of pests invading your Spokane home and customize our approach to get rid of them. For your part, follow your pest technician's instructions and keep your kitchen area clean.
Call Croach® Pest Control. Our insect, rat, and mouse exterminator solutions eliminate disease-bearing pests for good, so you can keep your family healthy and happy.
Our Spokane-Post Falls Insect, Rat and Mouse Exterminator Service Areas
We service homeowners and commercial properties in Spokane, Spokane Valley, Coeur d’ Alene, Post Falls, Liberty Lake, Airway Heights, Deer Park, Sandpoint, Lewiston, Clarkston, Moscow, and Pullman.