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Spiders are most active during the warm spring and summer months. During this time, most spiders emerge from their hiding places to lay eggs and hunt for food. However, each species of spider is different and some are more active than others. Stay vigilant for signs of spiders in your home once the weather begins to warm.

As you know, mice adore peanut butter, but who doesn’t? Beyond that sandwich staple, rodents are drawn to berries, grains, seeds, meat, and, yes, even cheese. They also eat pet food in a pinch and feast on plant materials, leftovers, and anything in the trash. In other words, mice aren’t picky.

Skunks spray as a defense mechanism to ward off predators. The active ingredient in their sulfurous, oily musk is n-butyl mercaptan, which evaporates into a powerful and smelly gas. Once the spray hits the skunk’s target, the stench can linger for days, and water and common cleaning kits aren’t enough to wash it away.

If you happen upon a skunk in your yard, try to back away slowly to reduce the chance of them aiming at you. Encouragingly, they don’t use their weapon casually, as it can take up to 10 days for their life-saving weaponry to refill. Paw stamping, hissing, lifting their tail, and arching their back are early signs they feel trapped or under threat and that it’s time to make a careful retreat.

False chinch bugs are generally smaller and somewhat paler than true chinch bugs, although they otherwise look similar. The name is a bit of a misnomer: They act very similarly and both feed on plants by sucking out their juices. However, chinch bug feeding tends to be very destructive to the plant, while strangely the false chinch bug does relatively little damage.