The holiday season is a time for celebration and good cheer all around, but it’s decidedly less merry and bright if you find yourself having to deal with surprise visitors—specifically, pests. A pest problem is a surefire way to spoil the holiday mood, but pests, unfortunately, find the warmth and prospect of food that our homes present in the cool weather to be irresistible. Knowing a few pest control tips can help you make the holidays merrier in the face of unwelcome houseguests.

Despite its namesake, the West Nile Virus is not exclusively limited to Uganda, Egypt, and Israel where it was discovered in the late 1930s. The exact spread is difficult to map, but it is theorized that animals such as dogs, cats, horses, and birds helped spread the virus to the western hemisphere and the United States in 1999. The West Nile Virus is extremely dangerous and deadly with a somewhat recent outbreak in Texas in 2012 claiming the lives of 286 people. There is currently no known vaccine or treatment and symptoms do not manifest in around 80% of people infected with around a 10% mortality rate.

Rodents are an unpleasant surprise to find in your home, and many homeowners are familiar with the shock of coming across a darting mouse or rat in your kitchen in the middle of the night. You’ve likely called your local pest control for one or two before. They’re some of the most common types of pests to invade homes, but you may be wondering why they chose yours as a place to settle down. It comes down to three simple attractions.

For any arachnophobe, suffering a spider bite is the ultimate fear and a call to action for an exterminator, but the average spider doesn’t really mean you harm. The only reason most spiders will go out of their way to bite a person is because they feel threatened. They’ll give you a defensive bite if you disturb their hiding place or roll over them in bed in the middle of the night, but it’s unlikely that a spider will bite you for no reason. However, if you have been bitten by a spider, what exactly should you do?

There are many DIY pest control tips that you can do around your home to keep the threat of large infestations low, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always work or that you won’t make mistakes.