Picture walking into your kitchen finding creatures on your floor with a whole lot of legs devouring a house fly. Rightly so, this is not exactly what you want to wake up to, but a centipede infestation is actually more common than you think. So, how can you keep these ugly little crawly creatures out of your house? These tips can help.

If you're not yet familiar with a centipede, it won't take much to learn more about them. They're usually red or brown in nature and they have lots of legs. Pinning down exactly how many legs they have, though, is rough, because different types of centipedes have different numbers of legs. They can have anywhere from 15 to 177 pairs of legs at a time. It's almost always an odd number, though. They're fairly flat creatures, and they look a bit like a worm with lots of legs.

You can find them throughout the United States, but they particularly like moist areas. In addition to all of those legs, they also have some antennae. You're far more likely to find them at night than you are during the day because they're nocturnal. They tend to feed on flies, spiders, and other small creatures.

Centipedes aren't super common in homes, and they don't necessarily pose a threat to your health the way some pest infestations can. Unfortunately, though, they do create quite a bite if you try to handle them. It can cause pain and swelling in most cases, and that's the last thing you want to deal with.

If you do have centipedes in your home, you're going to want to do a few things.

- Seal It Up! Find out how they're getting into your home, then eliminate those entry points as best as you can. They love moisture, so if you have weak spots or drain pipe holes or anything even remotely similar in your home, get rid of them immediately.

- Get Rid of Other Pests. Centipedes come in looking for a good meal, so make sure they're not going to get it. Your best bet is to take care of other pest problems as soon as you can so the centipedes don't come in at all.

- Contact a Pest Control Professional. If you do have a centipede problem, you can try DIY traps or other methods of control, but the chances are good that it's not going to work as well as you'd hope. Instead, you may want to contact a pest control professional for help. They'll not only be able to take care of the centipedes you already have in your home (both the ones you can see and those you can't), but they'll also be able to make recommendations to help keep the others from coming in too.

Centipedes aren't what you want to see anywhere in your home, so at the first sign of trouble, contact a Ransford pest control professional.