Pest Control

[drewxcore]

What is the worst youve ever experianced with unwanted visitors in your house...

and i dont mean people, so nerrrrr.

I'll start with this as its pretty bad. Before I was born my mum was living in Oz and she had a house somewhere (I'm not sure where) well underneath the bathroom was a nest that she was unaware of. The nest turned out to be spiders. Red back spiders. She basically had a bathroom infested with red backs. Yeah, she did have to call someone in...

I haven't had anything as bad, more annoying really. A few months ago in the summer I was in my kitchen when i noticed i'd left a can of coke on top of one of my cupboards, I had left it up there while cleaning and forgotten about it. The can was full. I went to stay at my dads for a while as i was bored and didnt come back for a few days. I had left a window open (yeah, i know). When I next went into the kitchen I saw the can, went to move it and loadssssss of little black flys swarmed away from it. Little bastards. I killed most of them over the course of a couple of days but some of them grew into big black flies. Noisy they were too...

 

[ole_grouch_1124]

Little field mice that managed to get in through a small hole in some subflooring that lies over a storage space accessed from the outside. A cat and repairing the subflooring took care of the issue.

 

[SlickTony]

I'll see your field mice and raise you juvenile roaches in the digital display of my microwave.

 

[O2]

Mice at various times at various houses. Found the entry point and sealed it after eliminating the visitor.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

My neighbor had an epileptic skunk move in under his house. Every so often, for no perceivable reason, it would let fly. Poor guy would have to move in with his parents for a couple of days until it aired out. A trapper finally caught the dim thing and let it go a looooooooooong way away.

 

[SlickTony]

Mice at various times at various houses. Found the entry point and sealed it after eliminating the visitor.

Thank God I have three cats.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

A rat got into our attic and played around there. Then it snuck down inside the walls and wandered around under the house. Needless to say, this drove the terrorier nutz. Then it made a strategic error and got into the pantry. Pepper started whining and scratching at the door so I opened it and started pulling out the big drawers one by one. As I pulled out each drawer, a bare tale would slip down the back and into the next one. When the varmint dropped down into the bottom drawer, Death was waiting. Good dog!

 

[O2]

Thank God I have three cats.

The first one we didn't have cats, the other two times the cat was busy sleeping. They have their own priorities.

 

[SlickTony]

The first one we didn't have cats, the other two times the cat was busy sleeping. They have their own priorities.

I don't know how much hunting instinct this lot has. I do know that they like to play a lot.

 

[O2]

I don't know how much hunting instinct this lot has. I do know that they like to play a lot.

I think ours was too old. The mouse was pretty much confined under the kitchen sink, one night with a trap got him. I get more out in my shop they come in from the cold. We have to make sure nobody gets s free ride into the house when bringing things in from the shop.

 

[SlickTony]

Our cats are somewhere between young and early middle age. I do know that they like to play with lizards until they die. I generally try to rescue the lizards and put the poor stupid things back outside. They used to be my vanguard against bugs coming into the house, until the new neighbors bombed their place and everything started coming through the party wall, like the Darfurians swarming into Chad.

 

[O2]

Our cats are somewhere between young and early middle age. I do know that they like to play with lizards until they die. I generally try to rescue the lizards and put the poor stupid things back outside. They used to be my vanguard against bugs coming into the house, until the new neighbors bombed their place and everything started coming through the party wall, like the Darfurians swarming into Chad.

Sorry to hear that....we're out in the country so we find all sorts of creatures. Not indoors, usually.

 

[Katyusha]

I have two, one was a black widow infestation around the house I grew up in. My parents had pest control coming once a month to deal with it, spraying inside and out, and we never could get rid of them. I can't count the number of times I walked through an old black widow web in Dad's workshop. One of their nests was right behind a shrub next to my bedroom window, too.

The other was wasps. This past summer, all summer long and well into the fall we were finding and killing paper wasps in the downstairs living room. They were flying around the lights, around the tv, crawling across the carpet, crawling up the wall, flying around the window above the tv, sometimes I'd find them in the folds of the blanket I was wrapped in. The cats would sometimes terrorize them but they never got stung. Only one ever stung my husband, and I never got stung. We never, ever saw where they got in, and we never found the nest. We will be calling pest control if they return in the spring.

 

[rgraham666]

I was having lots of fun with bedbugs until recently.

 

[ole_grouch_1124]

I'll see your field mice and raise you juvenile roaches in the digital display of my microwave.

No thanks, Slick. Roaches don't care if you have a cat.

 

[drewxcore]

I was having lots of fun with bedbugs until recently.

Sounds kinky...

 

[oggbashan]

Advice to Wife's grandmother in Army Quarters

My wife's grandmother was a new bride in married quarters in Cape Town, South Africa in 1914. She was having trouble with vermin (unspecified). Her sister wrote from Hull, Yorkshire with the following advice:

Get plenty of Alum & dissolve it in boiling water & pour it over the bedstead, chairs xc pour it well in all the little cracks wash the walls with it & around the skirting boards do not spare it & it will kill them all and destroy the eggs but make it strong & give it plenty do not be sparing another way is to make a fire in a big strong pan (first pasting paper over all cracks in windows and fireplace) then throw 2oz pepper and 6-8oz stone brimstone on the fire in the pan then rush outside quick shut the door and cover all cracks with paper and leave it to itself for 12 hours or longer if you could that will kill all life in that room / but if your place is one of many it may not be safe to use this remedy as if the fumes got through into another room it would kill all the people, so I think your safest way is to deluge the spot with strong Alum water it will kill all vermin Mum Eric and Em are still at the seaside...

The sister wasn't too hot on punctuation, nor on safety advice. "Stone Brimstone" = lump sulphur (or sulfur for US readers).

Og

 

[phillyinjun]

I have a serious fear of spiders and now have to watch out for nests of these things? Thank you.



Field mice, every winter for three winters. Finally found the hole and plugged it in tight. Been great for two winters now. Sadly, we have a mole come in one of those early winters. "Sadly" because it landed in a glue trap.

No more glue traps since then, the cruel things.

 

[glynndah]

Centipedes in the shower. We moved.
Slugs in the laundry room. We kept a salt box on the dryer.

 

[Boota]

double post

 

[Boota]

We get field mice every winter, but we also have a domesticated bobcat. They don't make it for very long.

 

[TE999]

A couple years back we had an infestation of Plaster Bagworms. They were everywhere on the walls. We were vacuuming them up by the...ahem...bagful. Then, just as mysteriously as they appeared, they disappeared. We figured they came in on a box or...ahem, again...a bag, ran their reproductive cycle and were gone.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Right now I've got a trapline in the back yard for gophers.

 

[OnlyByMoonlight]

I came into work one morning at a resturant to see that there was a 8 inch green garden snake on the floor. We got it out before the health inspector came.

 

[SlickTony]

No thanks, Slick. Roaches don't care if you have a cat.

The feeling is mutual--the cats don't care if I have roaches.

If I'd found paper wasps in bed with me, I'd have run away from home. Just the thought gives me major creeps.

TE, what in hell are plaster bagworms? I've seen bagworms before, but I thought their natural food and habitat was your arbor vitae bushes.