Uninvited guests

[K.D. Lightner]

The "tin cat" which is a metal trap a cigar-box shaped devise with doors on the sides, is something you can get in a good hardware store. The door is a trap door that opens and, once the mouse walks in, it snaps shut and will not open from the other side.

I have trapped and released over 50 mice with it.

I, too, tried the sticky stuff first and found many of them half dead or dying by the time I got to them, had to pour vegetable oil on their little feet to get them unstuck. Then, some would wobble off into the field. Probably more humane to kill them instantly than use that sticky stuff.

Also, I released them as far away from the apartment as possible. People told me they could find their way back if I released them near the place.

When I lived in NYC, roaches could be a problem. I never had them because I sprinkled boric acid around the baseboards, behind the stove and fridge, and sink, places they were likely to congregate. Within a week or so I never had roach problems. The boric acid worked far better than those "roach motels."

Yes, I get paranoid when I see a moth in the house. Haven't seen any here, but I have lavender scented mothballs around the closets.

karol


karol

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Oh, and spiders kill moths and ants and any creepy crawler they can entangle in their webs.

I consider spiders house guests. I just try to keep their webs out of the bedroom.

karol

 

[Girl Friday]

Most bugs get stomped, lizards are picked up and put outside for their own safety (the cats would torture them! )

I have a pet tarantula named Fluffy, she eats crickets (store bought), so they don't fare so well in my house.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

These ain't no Topo Gigios

The mice that crawl into my house and poo and wee on and eat my food and collection of vintage items including clothes aren't cute like movie mice. They are nasty and shudderingly creepy. Nasty hideous faces peeking out. Poo on my blanket! Bothering the dogs. Chewing my walls. Traps with no bait work better than traps with bait. Sticky traps work best but are more expensive: I check them regularly and put the rodent out of its pitiful misery with a heavy book (upstairs a book on Dior, downstairs The University of Georgia Alumni Directory 2005) inside a plastic bag. The pest and sticky trap get stuck on it and the vermin gets squashed. I had to waste a lot of precious food last year because of the awful useless critters.
I had a pet tarantula too!

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Girl Friday -- Wow, I have always wanted to have a pet tarantula. Are they easy to keep? Do you have it in a terrarium? Fluffy is a cool name for a tarantula.

I knew someone in NYC who had a pet tarantula he kept on a leash (string?) under his bathtub. He never had a roach problem.

Female tarantulas can live up to 25 years, I am told.

karol

 

[Miss Neecerie]

But by far the most obnoxious intruders I get are slugs. My bedroom is the last room in back, and I have a door leading right out to the garden. When it's hot I often leave the iron gate locked on the outside, but the door inside is left open. So the little slimers slither their way right into my bedroom, and I come home in the evening to find them sliming across the rug. Super ultra ugh! I pick them up with a towel or old sock or something and toss them out. They're so gross that I don't even want to squish them.

Tried sticking a rolled up towel across the door frame when its open? That might be a brick wall effect to a slug, not a great texture for them...terrycloth.

 

[Girl Friday]

Girl Friday -- Wow, I have always wanted to have a pet tarantula. Are they easy to keep? Do you have it in a terrarium? Fluffy is a cool name for a tarantula.

I knew someone in NYC who had a pet tarantula he kept on a leash (string?) under his bathtub. He never had a roach problem.

Female tarantulas can live up to 25 years, I am told.

karol

They are very low maintenance pets, I feed her once a month or so. She lives in a terrarium, I don't handle her as much as I used to, 2 cats, makes that a little difficult. They are actually very solitary, in the wild they rarely travel more than 5 or 6 feet from their home (or hole or whatever )

Here's a great website, this is where I go when I have questions:
http://atshq.org/index.shtml

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Girl Friday -- Thanks so much for the info and the web site. I really do want to get a tarantula.

I don't have a cat problem, but I live with my mother now and do have a mother problem.

She does not like anything that creeps, crawls, slithers, or looks like it might.

karol

 

[Starius]

I just brought in today's mail awhile ago, and in the weekly shopper a cricket had stowed itself away and abandoned ship on my dinner table.

I caught him in a kitchen liquid strainer and released him outside. It was my fault he got into the house. I showed mercy, are you happy people?!?

But the ones I find in my house, they're dead if they cross my path.

Although, truth be told, I don't like to kill crickets ever since I was a kid and saw my mother stomp on one... and witnessed a parasitic worm slither out of the cricket corpse. *shudders*

 

[Haversack]

It depends on the critter and the circumstances. Crane files I leave alone. They are harmless and don't have long to live anyway. Mosquitos and houseflies get swatted outright. Ditto any moth or small beetle. (These require a more systemic approach as they tend to be harbored in the pantry. Grain-based products HAVE to be kept in sealed containers.)

Ants are not dealt with as individual animals but rather as a corporate entity which can be 'reasoned with'. If ants appear in numbers, it is usually because we have spilled something. First, the spill gets cleaned up. Then the ants are tracked back to where they entered. Sometimes this has been through several rooms. In our 1910 house, the entry is now usually in the apron of a window sill. Spackle or silicone seals up the entry. If the hole is large enough, a bit of ant spray is put inside the wall cavity before sealing. We tend to keep the house well ventilated. Sometimes when there has been a weather change, (rain or heat), we'll get a lot of scouts. Then I'll purposely put a bit of honey out so a clear trail to their entry can be found. After a couple of years of reasoning, we don't tend to have any ant problems. The best way of course is to not have any food out. Hence, the cat's food dish sits in a pyrex pan of water. I've never, (knock wood), had the experience of living with cockroaches. We do try to keep things clean so that probably helps. Spiders get dealt with on a case by case basis. If they are seen during the day, they get brushed outside if the cat doesn't eat them first. At night on the bedroom ceiling, they get knocked down and schmushed.

In one place I used to live, the lower kitchen cabinets got mouse infested. I didn't keep food down there, but the critters ate the seasoning off my cast iron. My solution was peanut butter on a Victor mouse trap, and then taking the full trap down to the dumpster the following morning. This meant I had to walk in front of the landlord's real estate office in order to get to the dumpster around back. It took only about three days of doing this, (during business hours of course), before the hole in the wall behind the kitchen cabinets was fixed.

I used to have a tarantula as a pet back when I was in kindergarten. They tend to migrate by the thousands during certain times of the year in the Central Coast of California.

Haversack.

 

[luvthatlulu]

Great...

Im not too afraid of bugs, so I just catch it up in a cup and shake it loose outside. Many a spider have been spared that way

LD

...and then they hop the bus to my house!


Lulu

 

[TheKitschGoth]

You missed out the option of scream for someone else to come kill it

Well for spiders and daddy-long-legs anyway, pretty much anything else gets to live, just with a fair amount of encouragement to try life outdoors.

Although I'd quite happily have killed the wasp that decided it wanted to share my shower with me this morning

 

[Samsa]

Tried sticking a rolled up towel across the door frame when its open? That might be a brick wall effect to a slug, not a great texture for them...terrycloth.

Or perhaps a massive line of salt across the threshold? Slugs don't like salt.

 

[staggerwing]

I kill it unless my wife is watching. Then I capture it, take it outside, and kill it.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I kill it unless my wife is watching. Then I capture it, take it outside, and kill it.

lol

 

[Novella]

Skunk conference

Thankfully the last two places I lived at never had much of a bug/small rodent problem. Although ladybugs did get a bit annoying at the last place I lived. I'd toss them out the window because I didn't want to squish ladybugs. Two years ago the uninvited guests were of the large variety:

That's half of the crew found in the backyard one day. I didn't use the flash on the camera because I was afraid to startle them and experience the smell of six skunks. At that house there was also a possum that ate cat food and left a bowl of drool in exchange. Raccoons got daring and would come up to the glass sliding door at night. That was kind of cool. I'd never lived anywhere with so many big backyard visitors before.

 

[gluegungeisha]

Ahhh, I want a tarantula now!!

I can probably just catch one where I live. Fall is "tarantula season" in the foothills of the Sandias, where my parents live. They always run across the street while I'm driving...I've been known to pull over and scoop them up off the road. They're very docile!

 

[RIOT]

Novella, yikes! That backyard photo of yours sorta reminds me of that Dreamworks animation, Over the Hedge. The only thing you are missing is the turtle

 

[Diamondback]

hat's half of the crew found in the backyard one day. I didn't use the flash on the camera because I was afraid to startle them and experience the smell of six skunks. At that house there was also a possum that ate cat food and left a bowl of drool in exchange. Raccoons got daring and would come up to the glass sliding door at night. That was kind of cool. I'd never lived anywhere with so many big backyard visitors before.

Umm, yeah... dealing with the combined output of six skunks'd be nasty for sure. In my little slice of Greater Seattle, we get some big raccoons, but a couple to the kiester from an airsoft pistol I keep on the porch is usually sufficient. (I don't wanna kill 'em, just encourage 'em to move along!)

On critters of the arthropod persuasion, I try to live and let live, even stepping around 'em on the sidewalk when I can; but if I believe the bug is possibly dangerous to me, my library or my wardrobe it's Reapertime.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

We have had a mini drought here in central Iowa. I have some friends who live in Huxley who have several gardens. My friends plants lots of crops and, this year, have had many of them eaten by deer and raccoons. So many, in fact, that they are going to put in an electrified fence.

My friend told me one morning she looked out in her yard and saw seven deer outside. She loves to look at them, but needs to build better fences for her gardens.

Raccoons are so ornery; my brother tells a story that, one day, he saw a raccoon on his roof. He picked up a rock and threw it at the creature hoping to scare it away. The raccoon looked at him and then continued his rooftop foraging. Brother picked up another rock and threw it at the raccoon. At that, the creature picked up the rock and threw right it back at my brother. Brother went in the house.

karol