There is nothing more disturbing than when you see a centipede scurrying across your ceiling, or anything more terrifying than finding a centipede in your bathroom sink. Why do these little critters freak us out so much? Is it the way they walk? The totally unnecessary amount of legs they have? Or how they can just stay still for a long time, plotting to do something big? The bottom line is, nobody wants them in their house even though they cause no harm to humans!
The next question you ask is, “why are these insects so attracted to my home? I don’t leave any food out and I try to keep my home clean.” Everybody asks this question, but many don’t know exactly why centipedes find shelter in their homes.
Why are Centipedes Attracted to Your Home
The reason why centipedes find your home attractive to live in is that they are moisture pests. They are great at finding moisture from clogged gutters or leaky spigots. The resulting moisture from outside your home may cause cracks or wood rot, which is what centipedes use as their front door to get into your house. If you have gardens or moist soil surrounding your home, centipedes could be using them as beds to multiply. If you regularly grade that soil, you could help reduce the centipede population that enters your home.
Once they are in your house, they may stay a permanent resident if you have other bugs or pests that you may not see. Centipedes love eating other bugs like roaches, spiders, and silverfish.
How to Get Rid of Centipedes
The first step in ridding your home of house centipedes is to first get rid of their food source. You can accomplish this by placing sticky traps around your house to catch smaller bugs. If you notice more bugs in the trap in one area compared to the others, try to find their nest and destroy it.
If you invest in a dehumidifier, you can control the humidity in your home to help reduce the moisture in your home.
A more major project you can do is to find all the cracks and open areas in your home and patch them up. In addition to the cracks in wood, they can find their way through cracks in cement or block walls, basement windows that aren’t sealed properly, and uncovered sump pumps. They can also crawl their way through basement floor drains, which you can block with a screen so water can still drain through.
If you are still experiencing centipedes walking their way into your home, you may want to consider buying insecticides from a local home hardware store. Most of these insecticides are spray or wet powder based, so it will attract centipedes to them. Simply spray the insecticides in places where you suspect the centipedes are entering your home, such as cracks, drains, air ducts, windows, etc.
All credit goes to Action Pest Control
