10 Common Winter Pests in Kentucky
(and What to Do About Them)
Pest Expert Matthew S. Hess
11/10/2025
When winter sets in across Kentucky, the cold drives more than people indoors; it also sends a wide variety of pests looking for warmth, shelter, and food. While some insects and rodents “hibernate” outdoors, others see your home as the perfect refuge from freezing temperatures.
At Four Seasons Pest Solutions, we help homeowners across Kentucky protect their homes year-round from unwanted invaders and offer winter pest-proofing. Understanding which pests are most active in winter and how they survive can help you prevent problems before they start.
Here’s a look at 10 common winter pests in Kentucky.
Mice (Mus musculus and Peromyscus maniculatus)
Kentucky homes are prime targets for House mice and Deer mice. These small rodents reproduce rapidly and naturally live in habitats found throughout the Commonwealth. A single female can have up to 8 litters per year, each with 4–6 pups that will reach maturity in about 6 weeks, which means populations can grow quickly once they establish inside a home. They prefer warm, undisturbed areas near food sources. Attics, basements, garages, and wall voids are common nesting sites. They build nests from shredded paper, fabric, or insulation. Of course, they’ll eat almost anything from grains, pet food, and crumbs, to candy, soaps, and candles. Mice need very little water since most of their moisture comes from food.
Both house mice and deer mice can squeeze through gaps as small as ¼ inch, often entering through foundation cracks, gaps around pipes, or poorly sealed doors and windows. Additionally, they are good climbers and are known to scale brick, block, stone, and log buildings, and to enter attics through soffits or soffit J-channels. Their habits make them a formidable pest that poses unique urban challenges. Often, a dead mouse in a wall can smell terrible for weeks, which is especially concerning in commercial accounts. It also isn’t uncommon for both commercial and residential accounts to be unaware that they have a rodent problem. This can increase the adverse effects that rodents can have on both property and health.
To help control and prevent their entry, the first step is to sanitize by removing food sources. If there’s no food, shelter is useless. Next, keeping storage areas, basements, attics, and crawlspaces clean and clutter-free reduces the likelihood of nesting. Third, openings larger than a pencil can be sealed with a variety of products that mice won’t excavate. This helps exclude the mice from entering the building at all. Rodent prep should especially take place in the fall, right before they begin looking for a place to spend the winter. Lastly, contact Four Seasons Pest Solutions for professional trapping, baiting, and exclusion if you spot droppings, gnaw marks, or scratching sounds. Having year-round rodent control prevents rodents from getting started, overwintering, infesting, and causing damage and health concerns. It’s important to consider the hidden dangers of DIY Rodent Control as well.
Check out these 10 important facts about rodent activity in the summer, and these 5 tips to keep mice away this summer.
Norway Rats (Rattus norvegicus)
Larger and more aggressive than mice, Norway rats reproduce year-round when indoors. Each female can produce up to 60 offspring annually. They live 6–12 months, but can cause significant damage during that time. They prefer lower levels of buildings, like crawl spaces, basements, and around foundations, where they dig burrows outdoors and move inside as temperatures drop.
Norway Rats are omnivorous scavengers that feed on garbage, pet food, grains, and even small insects. They can enter a building through openings as small as ½ inch and often gnaw through wood, plastic, or drywall to expand those entryways. In order to prevent their entry into your home this winter, there are a few steps that can be performed:
- Seal exterior cracks and utility openings with heavy-gauge metal mesh or high-quality, solvent-based caulking.
- Keep trash tightly sealed and remove debris from near foundations.
- Eliminate water sources such as leaking pipes or condensation.
- Four Seasons offers rodent exclusion and baiting programs designed for Kentucky homes.
German Cockroaches (Blattella germanica)
German cockroaches are Kentucky’s most common indoor roach species. Females carry an egg case containing 30–40 eggs, and young roaches mature in about two months under warm indoor conditions. This species reproduces continuously indoors, even in winter, and their favorite place to thrive is in warm, moist environments like kitchens, bathrooms, and utility rooms, which are typical hiding spots. This enhances the health risks they pose and underscores the importance of restaurant pest control. If you’re looking for tips to control German Cockroaches, whether in commercial kitchens or at home, consider that they hide in cracks, crevices, and voids near appliances and plumbing, or under cabinets, during the day, then emerge to forage at night. They feed on crumbs, grease, food waste, pet food, and even soap residue and glue, including the glue on the back of wallpaper! Check out these 10 facts about German cockroaches.
Cockroaches often hitchhike indoors in grocery bags, boxes, used appliances, cardboard, and even people and personal items. Once established, they spread rapidly through walls and cabinets and can become a major infestation in a short time if conditions are favorable. Such large infestations pose several health threats, including inducing allergies in children. To prevent rapid reproduction, kitchens and bathrooms should be kept dry, clean, and free of food scraps and overnight dishes. Plumbing leaks should also be repaired promptly, and water spills should be cleaned up promptly to reduce favorable conditions. Use of roach baits and insect growth regulators can help to achieve long-term control. Check out these 5 DIY roach control tips. Note, however, that DIY treatments for German roaches are rarely successful. Instead, it may be best to opt for the professionals at Four Seasons Pest Solutions. We’ll get your roaches gone… guaranteed!
Odorous House Ants (Tapinoma sessile)
Named for the “rotten coconut” odor they release when crushed, odorous house ants are a year-round nuisance in Kentucky homes. Colonies can contain hundreds to thousands of ants and multiple queens. These ants nest in wall voids, under floors, or behind baseboards during cold weather. Outdoors, they live under mulch, logs, or rocks. They’re attracted to sweets, grease, and proteins, and basically anything from spilled soda to pet food. These aggressive ant invaders can enter through small foundation cracks, window frames, gaps around utility lines, and basically any small gap or crack, even the ones we can’t see.
To control and prevent odorous house ants, keep vegetation and mulch away from your home’s foundation. Avoid any stacked items on the ground, such as wood piles, bricks, rocks, or similar items, as these ants will make quick homes there. Taking the time to seal gaps and cracks around your home can help prevent them from easily entering. Additionally, promptly and thoroughly cleaning up food and drink spills, storing food in sealed containers, and not leaving pet food out for free-choice feeding will reduce the likelihood of odorous ants entering your home.
Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis)
Kentucky’s gray squirrels remain active in winter but seek warm, sheltered spaces to nest. Females may give birth as early as late winter. Your attic can provide the perfect shelter, and the insulation is an ideal nest. In fact, several generations of squirrels may nest in your attic if not quickly stopped.
To access the attic, squirrels must find small gaps, cracks, or openings, roughly an inch in diameter. If the material is easily chewed or gnawed, the squirrel can quickly enlarge an even smaller opening. Common entry points can include chimneys, soffits, roof vents, gable vents, wooden facia, and similar areas. If there are nut and fruit trees, grains, garbage, or even pet food nearby, there’s an even greater chance that squirrels might invade your home.
To prevent squirrels from entering, branches of trees and shrubs should be kept trimmed back 10 or more feet from the roofline or any other portion of the home. Sanitation is also a key prevention method. You can accomplish this by removing food sources, including those found outside (think acorns, hickory nuts, and other nuts or fruits), garbage, pet food, and any other food sources.
Once squirrels are actively invading your space, it’s time to call Four Seasons Pest Solutions. We can trap and remove the squirrels and fix all the entry points so they can’t get back in.
Raccoons (Procyon lotor)
Raccoons are highly adaptable mammals that do not truly hibernate but enter periods of torpor during cold Kentucky winters. Breeding occurs in late winter, with females giving birth to 3–5 kits in spring. Young raccoons stay with their mother through their first winter. Raccoons prefer wooded areas near water but readily adapt to urban and suburban environments. They seek shelter in attics, chimneys, crawl spaces, and sheds, especially when denning or raising young. Nocturnal and intelligent, they can open latches and manipulate objects, making your home their home unless you take measures to prevent it.
Omnivorous and opportunistic, raccoons feed on insects, small animals, fruits, vegetables, pet food, and garbage. Their attraction to readily available food sources often puts them into conflict with homeowners. This means keeping pet food, garbage, grains, and other food sources secured and out of reach of raccoons, which is often easier said than done. The key is to never allow a food source to draw them in, because once they find easy food, they will go to great lengths to continue feeding there, even after attempts to stop them.
Raccoons enter homes through roof vents, soffits, chimneys, pet doors, and foundation openings, and are great climbers, scaling walls by using gutters, close shrubs and trees, plumbing lines, and more. They can tear through weakened wood or roofing materials, push the soffit up and out of the way, and potentially cause expensive damage to gain access. Remember, if raccoons invade, do not try to capture them. Raccoons are known carriers of rabies and can be highly aggressive and dangerous. If you have raccoons in or near your home, contacting Four Seasons Pest Solutions for professional removal is your safest bet.
Skunks (Mephitis mephitis)
Striped skunks are solitary mammals that typically breed in late winter. Females give birth to 4 to 6 young in the spring. While skunks do not hibernate, they become less active during winter and may share dens for warmth. Around residential areas, they prefer to den under porches, decks, sheds, and in crawl spaces. Since they are primarily nocturnal, you may often smell them, but not actually see one, even if they are denning nearby. Although skunks are usually not aggressive, they will release a powerful spray if they feel threatened, which can leave you wishing you hadn’t disturbed them!
Skunks are omnivores that feed on insects (especially grubs), small rodents, eggs, fruits, and garbage. Their foraging often creates cone-shaped holes in lawns and turf. This disturbance of the ground can be as small as only a few holes, or it can cover large areas, costing hundreds and even thousands of dollars in damage.
When entering residential structures, skunks use small gaps, cracks, and holes to gain access to the underside of buildings, porches, and decks. If the hole isn’t big enough, they will easily and gladly burrow their way through. Since they are well adapted for burrowing, simply filling holes around a foundation won’t be enough. Often, it takes installing a ground barrier of hardware cloth or a similar product, placed one foot out from the foundation, one foot deep, and if necessary, attached to the underside of a building, porch, or deck. Such a barrier will prevent them from burrowing under your home and causing not only potentially serious damage, but a smell that will leave you wanting a new place to live!
Other methods of exclusion should include removing food sources such as fallen fruit and berries, scraps and scrap piles, and easily accessible garbage, as well as free-choice pet food. Adding motion-activated lights and sprinklers can also help reduce their presence on your property. Once they are present, however, it can be more difficult to remove them. That’s when it’s time to call in the pros at Four Seasons Pest Solutions and have the problem humanely removed. Then, we can tailor a prevention program that will stop future skunks from taking up residence on your property.
Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys)
BMSBs are an invasive Asian species and are a relatively new pest in Kentucky. Each year, BMSBs complete one generation, overwintering in homes, businesses, and other structures that provide shelter. Once winter has passed, the adults emerge in spring, mate, and lay their eggs on plants and vegetation. Throughout the summer, nymphal stages undergo complete metamorphosis, and the process repeats as new adults seek shelter for the winter.
What makes the BMSB such a notoriously persistent pest is its tendency to congregate in large numbers. As they seek shelter in attics, wall voids, around unsealed windows and doors, behind siding, and under soffits, they form large congregations to maintain warmth during winter. If you’re wondering whether your home could attract them, consider this: they prefer light-colored, sun-warmed structures with gaps, cracks, crevices, and other entryways into a sheltered portion of the building. You can perform your own preliminary inspection, starting with the part of your home that receives the most sun during the day (typically the south and west sides), and look for any gaps or cracks around windows, doors, siding, utilities, vents, and similar areas that need to be sealed. Remember, though: if you find a stink bug, it emits a very distinctive odor when crushed or disturbed!
Once inside, BMSBs do not feed but simply shelter. Outside, they prefer fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants. Ensuring their food sources aren’t available year-round can help prevent their arrival on your property come fall. When all else fails and you end up fighting BMSBs, call your favorite pest control company for quick results. Ask them about their exclusion plans so next year won’t be a fight! In the meantime, check out our ultimate guide to stink bug control!
Eastern Subterranean Termites (Reticulitermes flavipes)
Eastern subterranean termites are social insects that live in underground colonies containing workers, soldiers, and reproductives. In spring (typically March–May in Kentucky), winged swarmers emerge to mate and establish new colonies. This is called “swarm season” and is one of the most common times homeowners discover they have a termite problem. Unfortunately, once the swarm is gone, many homeowners feel they have conquered the battle, when in reality, the colony is expanding, new colonies have been established, and the home is at an even higher risk of potentially disastrous damage (not covered by homeowner’s insurance). In fact, most people do not realize that termites actually remain active during the winter, and many neglect important termite inspections. That’s why learning a few things about termites can be important.
A mature Eastern Subterranean termite colony can contain tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of termites. Many of these will be worker termites charged with finding edible cellulose material (like the wood in your home) and tearing it apart little by little to feed the colony. Since they primarily live beneath the soil and build small, pencil-sized mud tubes to access their meals (the wood above the ground), they’re presence and the resulting damage usually go unseen, resulting in thousands of dollars in overall damage by the time they are discovered. However, you can identify and prevent termite infestations, especially by using Sentricon. (Check out this video to see how Sentricon works.)
Since termites consume wood, paper, cardboard, and other cellulose-based materials, homes and other buildings are at particular risk of damage. Given their tendency to remain in their mud tubes, inside wall voids, or under homes, annual termite inspections or bait-based prevention treatments like Sentricon are important. Additionally, inspections for high humidity, leaks, rot, mold, fungi, and other indicators of moisture-related problems may help prevent termite infestations, as termites are particularly attracted to moisture-damaged or ground-contact wood.
Termites can enter buildings through cracks in foundations, expansion joints, utility penetrations, and wood-to-soil contact. They can fit through a crack as small as 1/16 inch in concrete, block, brick, stone, and similar materials. Once inside these cracks, they can hide in the center of blocks, deep within cracked concrete, or behind brick walls. If a builder claims that termites cannot breach concrete or masonry, it’s best to be cautious and seek advice elsewhere. One local builder in Science Hill, Kentucky, has expressed frustration and disbelief that termites can navigate through block walls and remain undetected inside. This lack of understanding and disregard for the facts can leave many homeowners vulnerable to termite infestations, leading them to believe their homes are safe when they are not. Always contact a professional pest control company for advice on pests, no matter how confident your builder or construction team may seem. They are not trained in entomology! However, good pest control professionals are both trained in their own field and in building, building materials, construction methods, and overall structural anatomy. Check out these helpful signs to identify termites in your home.
To prevent termites from entering your home, it is important to remove moisture, wood-to-ground contact, wood debris, and stumps within 100 feet of your home, and ensure your basement or crawlspace is dry. Besides these preventative measures, it’s also a good investment to hire a pest control company to perform a termite preventative treatment. Look for a 10-year or better warranty. Four Seasons offers lifetime warranties on some of our termite control and preventative treatments., like Sentricon, which could be your best termite defense!
Black Mold (Stachybotrys chartarum)
Black mold is a toxigenic fungus that reproduces through airborne spores. When spores land on damp, cellulose-rich materials (like drywall or wood), they germinate and form greenish-black colonies within 24–48 hours. Under ideal conditions (high moisture and warmth), black mold can spread rapidly throughout a structure. When black mold is present, other pests are likely present as well.
Black mold thrives in persistently damp, poorly ventilated areas such as basements, crawl spaces, bathrooms, and around chronic leaks. It appears as dark, slimy patches and produces a distinctive musty odor. Prolonged exposure to black mold can cause respiratory issues, headaches, allergic reactions, and, if high concentrations are breathed for an extended period, chronic mold toxicity can lead to death.
Black mold thrives on cellulose-based materials, such as drywall, wood, insulation, carpet, and paper. Any building material damaged by water can become a breeding ground for mold. Moisture is the main issue in these situations; even a small amount can lead to larger problems due to cohesion. When water accumulates, mold spores naturally present in the air can enter the home through the stack effect or through open doors and windows, eventually finding their way into cellulose materials, where they can begin to grow rapidly.
To prevent mold growth, it’s essential to eliminate moisture. Homes with low humidity, below 50% relative humidity, are less likely to experience mold. To achieve this, ensure proper ventilation, fix any leaks or water intrusion, and keep basements and crawlspaces dry.
Four Seasons Pest Solutions offers both prevention and remediation plans for mold, so you don’t have to worry about it. It’s important for every homeowner to understand the risks associated with mold and the serious consequences of long-term exposure. Regular inspections for mold and conditions that promote mold growth are highly recommended.
Winter Pest Prevention
Most winter pest problems start with small cracks or openings in the structure, easily accessible food, moisture, cluttered or unsanitary conditions, used furniture, and even your friends and family. Being conscious of these can not only help reduce pest infestations but also prevent potential structural damage and health issues.
Keep Your Kentucky Home Pest-Free This Winter
When temperatures drop, pests don’t disappear; they move in. From mice in the attic to cockroaches in the kitchen, winter pests can cause damage, contaminate food, and threaten your peace of mind.
Four Seasons Pest Solutions offers comprehensive pest and wildlife control services throughout Kentucky, combining proven treatments with long-term prevention and exclusion.
Don’t wait until you see the signs—schedule a winter pest inspection today and keep your home protected all season long.
And remember, it’s okay to live among pests… but you don’t have to live with them!
Four Seasons Pest Solutions, Inc.