Resources
Look up a pest, or find the service or page you need.
Articles
Stink Bugs and Asian Lady Beetles: Fall Invaders
Stink bugs and Asian lady beetles gather on homes in the fall and squeeze inside to spend the winter. In Kentucky, stink bugs start moving in around early to mid September, and Asian lady beetle flights peak in October. They don't breed or damage the house indoors, and sealing gaps before fall is the most lasting way to keep them out.
Published
Mice in the House in Fall: Why They Come In
Mice move indoors as the weather cools, and they need far less of an opening than people picture: a quarter of an inch, the width of a pencil, for a mouse, and half an inch for a rat. They give themselves away by sound and droppings first. Sealing those gaps is the half of the job that lasts, because an entry point left open simply refills.
Published
Cockroaches in Kentucky: Which Ones You Have
Kentucky homes get two very different cockroach problems. German cockroaches live indoors in kitchens and bathrooms and travel between rooms through walls and pipes; American and Oriental cockroaches prefer basements, crawlspaces and outdoors and come inside from there. Which one you have decides what the treatment has to reach — and at Liberty, which service handles it.
Published
Brown Recluse Spiders in Western Kentucky
Yes, brown recluse spiders live in Western Kentucky, and University of Kentucky entomologists say infestations get more common the farther west you go in the state. Look for a tan to dark brown spider about the size of a quarter with its legs spread, a dark violin-shaped mark on its back and six eyes in three pairs. They hide by day in closets, stored boxes, clutter and furniture, and hunt at night.
Published
Wasp vs Hornet vs Yellow Jacket: Know the Nest
Wasps, hornets and yellow jackets are all wasps, and the quickest way to tell which one you have is the nest rather than the insect. Paper wasps hang open, umbrella-shaped nests under eaves and ledges; hornets build large enclosed paper nests in trees and against buildings; yellow jackets hide theirs in the ground or inside a wall. Where the nest is decides how hard it is to reach — and at Liberty, whether it is covered by your plan.
Published
Ants in the Kitchen: Why They Come In and What to Do
Ants come into kitchens looking for food and water, and they often show up after heavy rain. Most kitchen ants nest outside, in walls or under floors, and trail in to crumbs, spills and sweets. Clean up food, fix moisture problems and seal entry points, and call a professional if ants keep coming back.
Published
Bed Bugs in Kentucky: How to Tell If You Have Them
Bed bugs are not a housekeeping problem. They arrive on luggage, secondhand furniture and belongings, they hide in the seams and cracks closest to where people sleep, and a spotless home is as open to them as any other. What settles it is physical evidence rather than a guess — which is why the work starts with an inspection and is quoted after it, instead of being arranged sight unseen.
Published
Fleas in the House: Why They Keep Coming Back
A flea problem in a house is mostly not the fleas you can see. Adults are one stage of four and spend most of their time on the pet, while the eggs, larvae and pupae sit down in carpet fibers, under furniture cushions and wherever the animal sleeps. Treating only the visible stage leaves most of the population in place, which is why vacuuming, timing and repeat treatment decide the outcome.
Published
Signs of Termites in Your Home
Termites work out of sight, so almost every sign you can see is indirect: pencil-wide mud tubes on foundation walls and floor joists, shed wings on windowsills and along the edges of floors, wood hollowed out along the grain with soil in the tunnels, and rippled or sunken patches behind wall coverings. Any one of them is worth an inspection, and because termites damage wood slowly, you have time to arrange one properly.
Published
Termite Swarm Season in Kentucky and Southern Illinois
In Kentucky, termite swarmers usually show up between March and May, depending on temperature and rainfall, often on a sunny day after rain. In Illinois, most swarms happen in spring, but they can happen in most warm months. Swarmers inside a home almost always mean an infestation, so get a termite inspection.
Published
Flying Ants vs Termites: How to Tell Them Apart
Look at the antennae, the waist and the wings. Termite swarmers have straight antennae, a thick waist and two pairs of wings the same length, while flying ants have bent antennae, a pinched waist and front wings longer than the back wings. Termite swarmers inside a home almost always mean the house has termites, so get an inspection.
Published
What Is a WDI Inspection? A Home Buyer's Guide
A WDI inspection is a check for visible evidence of wood-destroying insects — termites most of all — made when a home is being bought or refinanced. The inspector records what can be seen on the day of the inspection, and the results are reported on Form NPMA-33. It tells you what the evidence showed that day. It is not a statement that a home has no termites.
Published
Mosquito Season in Kentucky and Southern Illinois
Mosquitoes are active here through the warm months, and Liberty's mosquito season runs April through October. But the calendar matters less than the water. Most of the mosquitoes biting you in the evening were raised close by, often in containers on your own property — which is why treatment goes after the shady places adults rest and the water the larvae grow in, rather than the open air.
Published
Bats in the Attic: Why the Timing Decides Things
Bats are the one animal in this library where the calendar matters more than the method. All bats in Kentucky are protected by state law, and there is a stretch of the summer when flightless young are in the roost, so closing the way in traps them inside. Kentucky Fish and Wildlife recommends waiting until after August 15 for that reason. Getting bats out of an attic is an exclusion job done in the right season, not a treatment.
Published
Squirrels in the Attic: What Morning Noise Means
Noise overhead in the first hours of daylight usually points to squirrels. They are active during the day, which separates them from most of what else moves into an attic, and in Kentucky gray and fox squirrels are game species protected by state law. They chew their way in at soffits, vents and roof edges, and the damage that matters is structural — an opening that keeps getting bigger, chewed wiring and ruined insulation.
Published
Raccoons Around the House: What Keeps Them Coming
A raccoon is not in your yard by accident. Open trash, pet food left out overnight and a sheltered space it can get into are what bring one in and what keep the next one coming. Remove the animal and leave those in place and you have made a vacancy rather than solved a problem. The fix is the food and the opening, not the individual raccoon.
Published
Skunk Under the Deck, or an Opossum? How to Tell
Something is living under the deck, and around here it is usually one of two animals. Skunks dig their own way in and leave cone-shaped holes in the lawn; opossums move into a space something else opened and dig very little. Neither one is a permanent resident. In both cases the fix is closing the space once the animal is out — and the thing that goes wrong is closing it while young are still inside.
Published
Groundhogs in the Yard: the Burrow Is the Problem
A groundhog in the vegetable patch is an annoyance. The burrow under the shed is the real problem. University of Kentucky puts a woodchuck burrow system at up to 5 feet deep and 25 to 30 feet long, with at least two entrances — and some of them are dug from below ground, with no mound of dirt to give them away. Filling in the one hole you can see settles nothing.
Published
How to Keep Birds From Nesting Without Breaking the Law
Most bird nests are protected under federal law, and once a nest has eggs or chicks in it, it is illegal to destroy it. A short list of non-native birds — house sparrows, European starlings and pigeons — does most of the nesting on buildings, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act does not apply to them. Which bird you have decides what may lawfully be done, and it is why the real work happens before nesting season.
Published
Crawl Space Moisture Problems Are Pest Problems
A damp crawl space is a pest problem before it is anything else. Moisture is what makes the space liveable for termites, carpenter ants, damp-wood beetles and the crawling insects that want somewhere cool and wet to sit, which is why treating the insects without dealing with the water only buys time. You cannot treat your way out of a moisture source, so the moisture is the actual job.
Published
Silverfish, Centipedes and Earwigs in the Bathroom
Three very different creatures turn up in bathtubs, sinks and basements at night, and people mix them up constantly: silverfish, house centipedes and earwigs. Telling them apart is the first job, because none of them is quite what people fear it is. The second thing worth knowing is what they share — all three are tied to damp — so finding one indoors is information about conditions in your home rather than a verdict on your housekeeping.
Published
Camel Crickets in the Basement: What They Are
The humpbacked, long-legged crickets that jump when you disturb them in a basement or crawlspace are almost certainly camel crickets, also called cave crickets or spider crickets. University of Kentucky entomologists describe them as harmless despite how they look, and they do not chirp — the chirping people expect from a cricket comes from house and field crickets instead. What camel crickets do tell you is something about the space they are in: they live where it is dark and damp.
Published
Carpenter Bees: The Round Holes in Your Deck Rail
Clean, round holes about the width of your little finger in a deck rail, eave or fascia board, with coarse sawdust below them, are carpenter bee work. They do not eat the wood — they tunnel into it to raise their young, and the damage compounds because the same galleries are reused and enlarged year after year. They are pollinators too, so what needs dealing with is the wood.
Published
How Often Should You Get Pest Control?
Regular pest control runs on a cycle because pests do. Almost everything you find indoors got in from outside, and the moments it moves — a generation maturing, a colony relocating, the push indoors when the weather turns — follow biology, not a calendar. A scheduled visit is timed to land ahead of those moments, which is why it is worth doing in a month when you are seeing nothing. Liberty's plans are every 3 months.
Published
How to Choose a Pest Control Company
Start by confirming the company is licensed by your state. The Kentucky Department of Agriculture and the Illinois Department of Public Health both offer online searches. Then get more than one estimate, ask how the company will identify and handle your problem, read the contract and guarantee terms, and walk away from high-pressure sales.
Published
Pests and wildlife
Each page shows how to identify the pest, the signs to look for and how we treat it.
Plans, reviews and more
Ready to get started?
Tell us what you're seeing, and we'll help you choose the right service.
Pick a preferred day, Monday through Saturday. Our office will reach out to confirm your time.