Any unwanted critters in your home? (besides any relatives)

[retrorussell]

Hey all.
Curious to know what creepy crawlies you have scurring about your house that really get you ticked off, while you desperately look around for a flyswatter/can of bugspray, or just mush it with a hand or paper towel.

Me, I got gnats everywhere.  Damnit damnit damnit!!!

[Newt]

Bats.  In the attic.  They give me the creepy-crawlies.  Not very squishable, though.

(I do know you meant bugs, retrorussell.  Bats is what I have.)

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Earlier ths summer, I did my part to try to be the first human to sh*t a brick...

As I was cleaning out my closet, something was living in a folded blanket that was in there for years.  As I slowly pulled it out, and unfolded it, a huge brown Wolf Spider (perhaps 2 and 1\2 or 3 inches wide) stared me right in the face. Each one of his legs must were god knows how long..he had to be as big as my hand.

It started right for me, and you never saw a man in my weight class jump so far back...   I let him get onto the floor of the living room, and then I showed him my love with the bottom of my foot. I hate spiders. 

As a locomotive marvel, they are fascinating to watch; as a house guest, they need to be evicted, and fast.

[3mnkids]

yep.cave crickets.. ugly ones. They are big and brown and look like a cross between spiders and grasshoppers.

[The Burgomaster]

Thankfully, we have none in our current home except the occasional spider or fly.  In our previous home we had a few mice.  We had an exterminator come in and put traps and poison around but we had a heavily wooded area behind our house and I assume mice would move in, die, and other mice would move in.  So, no amount of extermination would keep us mouse free.  They really didn't bother me.  We lived there for 3 years and I only saw 2 mice the whole time.  I think they mostly stayed in the attic.  But my wife didn't want to stay - - and she's the boss - - so we sold the house and bought a new one that is NOT bordered by woods.  In fact, we have only one tree in our yard.     

[AndyC]

Right now, I'm cleaning up the last of the mice in our basement. We had a little bit of rot at the bottom of our side door frame, which allowed them to chew their way in where wood meets stone. By the time I found it and fixed it, we had four or five in the house. I figure there's one left. This one's gotten wise to the traps, and keeps out of sight. I got three of them easily with traps, and Lori threw a bucket over one, then called me at work to come home and move it outside.

For the last one, I'm just going to have to go back to the old-fashioned mousetraps. We had mice a few years ago, and I cleaned them up with plain old wooden Victory mousetraps. They did the job, but they didn't always catch the mouse in a fatal spot. Two got caught by the front leg. One of them I had to track down and find behind a stack of boxes, where he'd dragged himself trap and all. Then I had to come up with a way to finish those mice as quickly and painlessly and neatly as possible. The first idea turned out to be none of the above. So, this time I got some fancier traps that require the mouse to lift a cover off the bait, which guarantees he's right where he needs to be. I highly recommend that kind of trap. And putting one of those ultrasonic gadgets in the kitchen after the last time has kept the mice in the basement.

A few people we know have also gotten mice moving in, now that the weather is getting colder. Same thing happened last time too. Apparently, some years are worse for mice than others.

I won't even go into what the moles have been doing to the yard. Last spring, after the snow melted, it looked like a miniature WW1 battlefield, all trenches and craters and displaced dirt.

[Mr. DS]

In my house we get shellacked with sugar ants every year.  They are ridiculous to try to control.  I've found Terro Ant Traps to work rather nicely as a temporary fix.  However, they always seem to regenerate within a few weeks.  Luckily winter cancels them out completely.  We also get a lot of spiders around here which I like Umaril can't stand.  I'm petrified of them. 

When my wife (then girlfriend) first moved in together we lived in a shack in the woods basically.  We fought mice battles all year round.  I killed, no lie, probably at least a dozen mice a week if not more.  Not sure how we got out of there without diseases.

[retrorussell]

(I do know you meant bugs, retrorussell.  Bats is what I have.)

Any small critter that doesn't belong in your household counts.  Glad I don't have bats!

[Jack]

We had a lot of these ugly little things this year:



I guess the weather was just perfect for them or something.  I even found one in the bottom of the cup that we keep our toothbrushes in    They seem to be going down in numbers quite a bit lately though.

Now that it's fall, we usually get a lot of bugs trying to escape the cold and come live with us in our cozy warm house.  I spray some bug killer all around the foundation.  Probably doesn't do any good, but it makes me feel better at least.

[Newt]

EEEWWWWWW! EARWIGS!  Cave crickets are creepy enough...but earwigs are just ICKY!

[AndyC]

Earwigs used to bother me more, but now I don't really mind them. Probably a good thing, because they're just about everywhere around here in the summer.

Spiders are another one. Used to hate spiders, but somewhere along the line, they just stopped bothering me. If I see one go scurrying across the carpet, I'll as often as not just let it continue on its way. I'm sure it didn't hurt that I've gone out of my way to avoid giving Ro any irrational fears of creepy crawly things, to the point of even getting them to crawl onto my hand so I could show them to her. She loves bugs, and it gives me a real sense of satisfaction when I see her next to some of her little friends, who run from anything with more than four legs or less than two. A couple of these kids freak out if a dog licks them. Makes me regret that we also taught Ro not to mock people.

[Mr. DS]

Thanks to Jack I finally figured out what the name of those things are. 

[Andrew]

In Delaware our most common unwanted pest in the house is the common housefly.  From the beginning of summer until around now, they are hard to keep out (especially with three kids who run in and out).  We also end up with a number of fruit gnats during the summer, but there is a way to make a trap for them that works pretty well.

Haven't had a problem with ants since right after we moved in.  Terro is extremely effective at killing off ant colonies.

Otherwise, we get the normal number of crickets that you see in this area.  Most of those are in the unfinished basement.  The cat takes care of any that make it to the first floor.  There are a lot of cellar spiders in the basement.  I go through and clean them out from time to time.  We mostly get medium sized jumping spiders in the actual house.  Either the kids or I catch them and put them outside.

The garage is where the craziness goes on.  Lots of crickets, spiders of all kinds (including some fair sized wolf spiders), and then there are the toads.  The toads think that they live in the garage.  Heck, they do live in the garage.  They feast on the insects, and you can hear them doing their little mating chirps at all hours.  I've cleaned the garage and removed all of the toads.  They came right back.

Darn toads.

We haven't had many problems with mice.  Part could be the cat. Mostly it is that I've gone through and sealed up holes, removed any vegetation touching the house, and gotten rid of places they would use as homes near the house.  Since our land used to be a field, there are not many places nearby for them to live besides other houses or neighbor's sheds.  I keep mouse traps in the two places they might enter the house (garage and under the gas fireplace), and that has caught any that tried to move inside.  My wife likes the new round traps that you turn to wind and set, and they have done a good job at catching the mice. 

Katie and I did kill a mouse last year that got in the garage.  I scooped it up with a dustbin and tossed him out of the garage into the yard before he could hop out.  Then we beat him to death with the rakes.  They neighbors probably thought we were nuts.

We've had butterflies and a dragonfly loose in the house this summer, and the wife wasn't too appreciative.  A large dragonfly buzzing through the room and crashing into things is, to say the least, disruptive.  I get blamed at times for any temporary pets (insect, reptile, or amphibian) that get loose in the house, probably for teaching the kids how to catch them.

[dean]

I find that any critters thus far get taken out by the cat who stalks any insect/bug with an interest that would make a serial killer gasp.

So really, the only unwanted critter is my cat [who is a bit of a psycho at times]  [wouldn't have it any other way though]

[AndyC]

Our old Brittany Spaniel, when he was younger, used to see spiders scurrying across the floor and just casually trot over and eat them. He was a handy dog. Great for spills too.