Buggin’
[about two weeks ago]
Eating lemon sorbet at my desk, straight from the pint with a serving spoon like the classy dame I am, I drop a nickel-sized blob of sorbet next to the keyboard. My desk is actually not a desk, it’s unfinished lumber laid on top of two bookcases, so I can’t really wipe up spills; I blot them and try to forget them. Usually.
[about ten days ago]
…But not always.
My fridge gets a little overeager at times and just straight-up freezes everything — better that than the alternative, I suppose, but it’s a bit difficult to see the bright side when you’ve just sprained your wrist trying to cut an onion-sicle. After dressing a salad with some vinaigrette cubes and eating in front of the TV, I settled back at my desk with a (frozen, unbeknownst to me) can of Diet Coke, which promptly [chonk!] convexed on the bottom of the can, [spenk!] convexed on the top of the can, [fffffsssss!] announced its displeasure with this room-temp state of affairs, and then [fsshhplap!] Bellagio-fountained the left side of my desk with ice chips and denatured aspartame. Three hectares of paper towel later, I settled back at my desk again, with a glass of lime seltzer this time, because of course that was the last Diet Coke in the refrigerator. Explody little bitch.
[Sunday before last]
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what looked like an orange cat doing the hokey-pokey. I closed my eyes for a moment, reminding myself that while I do have an orange cat, he does not dance, and perhaps I should think about getting more sleep, but when I re-opened my eyes, sure enough: you put the left paw in, you draw the left paw back, you put the left paw in, then you pat the floor nine times, you do the Hobey-pokey and you pounce on bits of lint, what is that all a-bout.
Well, he’d found a very very tiny ant, is what, and the two of them were locked in a pat-pat-pat-pat-pat/play dead/run off/pat-pat-pat-pat-pat paw de deux, which went on for another twenty minutes, at which time I couldn’t take it anymore and blew the ant under the TV.
This may have been a mistake.
[six days ago]
“Oh, hello, ant.”
[five days ago]
“Beat it, ant. [flick] Beat it, other ant. [flick] You too, other ant…s. [flick flick]”
[three days ago]
I got to my desk and found two ants standing on the site of the sorbet blob, shooting the shit. I mushed them both; minutes later, another ant crossed the keyboard and over my hand to get to the blob. After snacking on the blob for a few seconds, it strolled over to a former Diet Coke puddle. “I have ants,” I said, to no one. “Faaaaaan-tastic. Not.” The ant zipped behind a brass bookend and out of sight.
I cleared off the desk and Lysoled the hell out of it. When I could kind of breathe again, I Febrezed it for good measure. I put everything back on the desk. The next ant is apparently hoping for a career in show business, because with perfect comic timing it waited exactly three beats after I’d sat back down, then made its entrance from behind a Bill Bryson book.
An hour and a half was then wasted trying to arrange a Post-It that says “FUCK OFF, ANTS” on it next to the sorbet blob, then waiting for an ant to walk in front of it so I could take a picture.
[two days ago]
I cleared everything off the bookshelves. It was a dusty, shoulder-muscle-twanging pain in the ass, but I knew this would not end until I flushed out the queen and flattened her with a vintage dictionary, so into the breach I went with Swiffer sheets, soapy water, and the righteous rage of a woman who has excused her horrendous housekeeping failures for years on the grounds that at least she never had insects.
On the plus side, I forgot I even owned that biographical dictionary of film. On the minus side, many sneezes and no queen. It is true that I did not see any ants on the desk afterwards, but I did see one on top of a picture frame on the living room table, carrying a tiny set of surveyor’s equipment and wearing a tiny tinted visor. I leaned down to the ant: “You tell Big Mama that when I find her, she’s toast.” The ant was like “whatever man” and then I was embarrassed because I tried to threaten an ant, and it didn’t even work.
[also two days ago]
It was nighttime; I had plans later, but right then I was chilling on the couch paying bills and watching Rocky IV on Spike. The cats, typically, remained quiet and unobtrusive throughout the relatively dull “Apollo, I must warn you for the purposes of dramatic irony that this fight with Drago is a bad fucking call” lead-up. Nor did the scuffling start during the interminable James Brown performance (but how awesome is Apollo’s short-sleeved sequined Star-Spangled Banner tailcoat? In fact, how awesome is Apollo Creed? Can someone please start a band and name it “Apollo Creed’s Restless Ghost”? That guy is a honey-baked ham. What ever happened to Carl Weathers, anyway?). No, they waited until the climactic moment of the exhibition match when the Cold War is punching Apollo in the head, to death, to come barreling out of the bedroom all scrambly pouncy, and Hobey’s tail was so fat, he looked like a beaver, but it’s not like that’s anything new.
The cats chasing a beetle the size of a baseball? Yeah, that’s new.
I have never seen a creature like that in my life. It looked like a toy, or a beetle crafted by the effects department for a movie about…I don’t even know. Baseball beetles from outer space. And where did the cats chase it? Straight at my legs. That thing was fast, too. I think. It sounded fast. The sound of its hooves on my wood floor sounded pretty fast to me.
So, it ran under the couch. Terrific. I assume it’s still under there, snacking on a mastodon leg or whatever it is prehistoric carnivorous beetles who owe me fuckin’ rent do in their spare time. I promptly packed up my bindle and went over to Skyrockets’s house, and the cats followed me to the door all “you’re going to leave us alone with that thing?” and I was like, “Nice knowing you, bye,” and ran away.
The SIZE of a BASE! BALLLLLLL! Gee-ROSS!
I will not sit here and tell you I don’t eat on the couch, drop crumbs on the floor between the table and the couch, and leave the crumbs there for a couple of days until I get motivated to sweep. I will not sit here and tell you that I pull all those board games and books and photo albums and dead labor leaders out from under the couch every time I mop the living room, either, because I don’t, because it’s a pain in the ass. And I will not sit here and tell you that I’m going to start now, because the Beetletron 3000 is under there, and if I scare him out, he’s going to Drago me.
But I have to. Otherwise the next chapter in the saga is going to involve coming home from work and finding rats trying on my shoes.
Why now?
Tags: city living feline fun times home 'n' garden
Snake in the toilet? I would never pee again. Ant traps work pretty well, but I personally had a lot of success yesterday in our bedroom while ironing my shirt for the day. Didn’t want to squish the ant with my bare foot, so I ironed it. VERY satisfying death throes.
At least they were not fire ants. I grew up in the northeast, where “fire ants” are like ghost stories you tell your friends to freak them out, but no one has ever actually seen them.
Then I bought a house in Texas, and immediately walked somewhere in the general vicinity of a mound, and 10,000 ants swarmed out and climbed up my legs, biting the whole time, and I looked like I had a swollen, itchy, oozing pox for weeks. Hate, hate, HATE fire ants. But at least they have the good grace to stay outside, so far. The giant, striped mosquitoes? I think they shrink down to pass through the little holes in the screens, and then get big again, so they can drink more blood and leave bigger welts. Also hate.
Oh, I love it when you write long pieces. Nothing like a good story told well.
I reccommend a high-powered hoovering of all the cracks, floor and wall, especially where there’s food; I’m guessing a Roomba can’t reach them. I am usually Zen with bugs; I don’t mind spiders on my ceilings or ladybugs on my plants because they eat other, more annoying bugs. With the exception of centipedes. I don’t know what they eat, but I’ve always fed them seven swift courses of shoe.
This is my first summer in my new house and I have become infested with the big black ants. I can’t tell exactly where they are coming in, but they love the bathroom. I find them around (and in) the toilet and constantly find one or two chilling in the bathroom sink. They don’t seem to be interested in food or the kitchen. I bought the Raid poison disks this past weekend and threw them all over the bathroom hoping it will take care of the problem. The only issue is that I have to remember to keep the bathroom door closed so the cats can’t get at the poison.
Ugh! I feel for you. May I suggest moving? Seriously, I just sold my apartment because of a cockroach infestation that would just not go away. Those fuckers were resistant to Raid – I could aim the nozzle at them for as long as possible and they STILL would not die!
I hope the new owners are enjoying them!
Oooooh, MAN, this is so familiar! I fought an ant battle a few weeks ago. My husband and I were laying in bed one lazy Saturday morning, and my arm was itchy. No bit deal, whatever, just scratch it. Then I felt a sharp something, and there was an ant CHEWING on my wrist. The hell? I looked up and my pillow was COVERED in tiny little ants. Never got out of bed so fast in my life. Turns out they had found an entrance in the floorboards just under the head of our bed, so naturally they climbed the walls to investigate, which led them to our bed. Horrific way to wake up. We pulled the bed back to see where they were coming in and why we sudden had millions of them, and found an old pile of cat barf hidden under the bed. The cat juuuust about got an eviction notice after that. We used Raid ant traps and they were gone in about two or three days.
Then there were the kitchen ants. Damn things totally ignored the traps. I spent three hours with a glue gun trying to seal up their entrance, and finally just lined my whole kitchen counter with duct tape to keep them out.
I suppose, though, even with all the ants, I fell lucky. I live in Arizona, and a friend of mine has problems with SCORPIONS in the house–including one crawling on the edge of her daughter’s bed after she woke up from a nap. Now THOSE are some nasty fuckers to have in your house.
There’s very little worse than sitting on the couch, watching a movie with all the lights off, and noticing something HUGE and dark scuttling across the floor. Yes, I’m talking about wolf spiders. Yes, I screamed the first time that happened. And the second. Maybe the third, too. Those suckers are huge, and they jump! My cat sure liked to chase them, though.
I grew up in a land of flying cockroaches. Which is why I moved to New England for college and never went back.
I’ve had ladybug infestations (I just escort them out) and this weird cricket-beatle looking thing that apparently came through the window air conditioner (I tried smashing them but that was so gross I started escorting them out too). I can’t find where any of them are getting in, but I haven’t had anything serious yet. Fingers crossed.
I had an ant infestation briefly last year. They showed up the day the movie “Ant Bully” opened. I’m all eco-organic-natural-vegetarian (when it’s not a mosquito/tick/really gross thing that demands to be killed), so I just escorted a few outside and started rinsing Coke cans. Once the movie was out of theaters, they disappeared and they’ve never been back. Seriously!
The best thing I can think of is to call Terminex or whatever your extermination company of choice is and ask them to please come and bring out the big guns. You’ll probably have to put the cats in a kennel for a few days, but that is the fastest , longest-lasting, and most efficient way to get rid of ants.
As for the beetle…well, if it survives whatever Terminex man sprays on it, you should probably call a priest.
Was anyone else reminded of the Sars/Mr. Stupid spider incident from childhood? Just me then? Hee, anyway.
If you’ve got a regular vacuum, suck up the little fuckers. I HATE spiders and shit, so when I spy one, because I don’t want to touch it for god’s sake, and the cat talks to it (seriously, he’s all “Mrowr! Come here so I can eat you!” at the ceiling) I just grab the Eureka and terminate them.
I can’t play with the big kids since I live in the Midwest and the bugs aren’t as big, plus…suburbs. But when I was pregnant with my oldest son, my husband and I lived in an older ranch house with a dank old basement full of–centipedes. Big ones. And every morning when I staggered out to the kitchen for a big glass of orange juice, the only thing I could stand to drink in the morning that didn’t make me puke, there was one of the sons of bitches pulsating in the early morning glow, about five inches long on my kitchen wall…..
….back to the bathroom to retch and call my husband to dispatch it. Ah, memories….
I have a love/hate relationship with bugs, because they’re fascinating creatures, but at the same time, AGH CREEPY.
It’s worse when your roommates are responsible for the infestation.
“Dude, why are there giant crickets everywhere?”
“Because I’m breeding them for lizard food.”
“Why are they EVERYWHERE, though?”
“Cuz the thing I built to hold them didn’t work so well. But it’s okay. We can’t find the lizard, so he’ll probably eat them sooner or later.”
Change “giant crickets” to “mice” and “lizard” to “snakes,” and you’ll get the other story of household infestation.
Not to mention that we lived by a park on the rural side of town and had vole infestations. One evening, Jing the cat dove in between the couch cushions and emerged with a dead mole in her mouth. Maybe I should mail you Jing to help with the Berserker Beetle.
Ever get those nasty little gnats? Those invisible little bastards seem to think my nose is the bat-cave or something! I’m sure it’s funny to watch, but feeling a buzz up my nose will wig me out every time! Gah!
Flying cockroaches – in Texas they told me “That’s a palmetto bug” and I was all “That’s a flying M-F-in’ cockroach, ya big liar!” Ish!
I was coming out of a Rockies game once & something hit me in the head hard enough to dislodge my spectacles…and got stuck in my hair. It was a praying mantis. Cool bug, but they’re BIG & have eyes like a goat. I did the giant freakout dance that time, you betcha!
I’ve heard ants won’t cross a chalk line, so you may want to draw around the doors & windows with some sidewalk chalk. My cats won’t even chase ants any more…they’re eagerly awaiting miller-moth season.
Good luck with that beetle. EW!!! but I’ll bet it was funny to see it chasing your cats around.
(Bridgid, sorry about your kitty. Damn.)
Ugh, I feel your pain. I had a terrible ant infestation in my kitchen about a month ago. They stuck around until I ended up with a really weird infestation of teeny-tiny baby praying mantises (manti?) who I can only assume were eating them.
The upshot is, the ants moved to the bathroom, which is still inconvenient but somehow more tolerable, and I move in ten days anyway. I hereby proclaim this somebody else’s problem.
I transplanted the praying mantises to the garden where something was eating my peppers, and they seem to have taken care of that problem too.
I’ll see your large beetle and raise you a giant waterbug (which in reality is a massive roach that can fly and comes out of sink drains). I just bought my first house and have never had to deal with things like this before. First month in the house I heard what I thought was a mouse scrabbling around under my bed, only to turn the light on and see the World’s Biggest Roach running for the bathroom. After a lot of shrieking and flailing, I managed to drown it in Raid before trapping it under a jar, which stayed there for weeks while I used the guest bathroom.
Now my neighborhood has these green caterpillars that are covered in fuzzy white hair and drop out of trees onto your head while you’re walking underneath. I’m thinking of walking the dog while holding an umbrella, rain or shine.
*shudders*
We have “aggressive house spiders”, which bite, so the spiders and I have a deal: If I see you in the house, you die. We also have centipedes in the basement, which have pretty much the same deal except that they only die if I find them upstairs. Luckily we haven’t had ant issues. Yet. I am hoping that the large black ant I saw last night in the basement was *not* a carpenter ant. *crosses fingers*
NO RAID! Sprays like Raid kill some ants but panic the rest, which causes them to split the nest, which equals more bugs. Raid is the enemy. Well, besides ants.
Get some gel baits and throw ’em down…ants track food via pheremones, so they will lay the path to the bait, thus ensuring that after the initial bait/food finders have gone to the Big Ant Heaven in the Sky, their “hey! Food this way!” trail will remain to lure the rest of the ants to their doom, and the bait will get carried back to feed and poison the rest of the nest.
That beetle, I don’t even know. Get a big stick.
Just yesterday my office was graced with a visit from a herd of teeny tiny black ants. Facilities will be installing some traps. They don’t gross me out too much, but it’s annoying to have to flick them off my paperwork.
For those who mentioned slugs (my personal bug phobia)… you can always salt them – messy (better to do outside) but satisfying. Also, you can put out a shallow pan (like a disposable aluminum pie pan) full of beer. It can be super cheap crap beer. They will crawl in and die. I’m not sure if they drown per say, but they do die.
My last apartment had an ant problem, which went hand-in-hand with my landlord problem. Landlord was a slovenly “contractor” who had gutted his apartment and left it strewn with food. I lived directly *over* him, and even though my kitchen was pretty much spotless, ants came up through the floor and got into my cabinets. A pack of traps, a can of Raid, and one (unrelated) blowout fight with my landlord later, I found the little fuckers IN MY SUGARBOWL. A sugarbowl with a LID.
I moved shortly after that.
My mother raised us to believe that if you saw a single bug in your house, it meant you were a dirty dirty person. She would seriously see one ant in the bathroom & we would all spend two days cleaning.
Even though I know that hot days in Texas lead to ants in apartment, and we have pest control come out every few months, I still flip out over bugs inside. I can handle any little creature when I’m outdoors, but if it’s in my bathroom, it’s in MY SPACE. So I usually do the bowl over the bug thing, wait for my husband to kill it, then sanitize until I drop.
Grossiest thing growing up? My cat ate 3 junebugs, then puked them back up. IN. MY. BED.
Have you ever seen an ant ball? I’m just saying — count your blessings.
(Unless you have seen an ant ball, in which case I am saying, “Dude, that sucks.”)
An…ant BALL?
You know what, don’t tell me.
I lived in the land of the flying cockroaches for a time. One got in our house once, and my stepbrother aimed a lighter and a spray can of Raid at it, setting it on fire. This did little more than anger the winged critter, which FLEW AT US WHILE ON FIRE. I still see that in my nightmares.
Sweetfreedom, the roach in the hair story chilled my blood. I might have grabbed scissors and cut off that section of hair had it been me, and had I been able to think and function normally under those circumstances, which I would not have. Shudder.
Did anyone else start snickering at “ant ball” or am I the only child here?
Hey Sars– we found out we had an ant problem in our old house when the spring rains started a few months after we bought it, and the ants started (literally) coming out of the woodwork. Add to this 3 children who were constantly scattering all manner of Goldfish crackers and raisins throughout the house, and we had a nasty problem. After banning food outside the kitchen or dining room, I did some research and found out that ants hate cayenne pepper and Windex will kill them. I made a thick paste of cayenne pepper and water and spackled the cracks in the wall they seemed to come from, and I sprayed Windex on any ant I saw, and we saw an immediate decrease in ants. The next spring we had a much smaller infestation, and the spring after that they were gone.
Oh, I lived in Hawaii for a dozen years, and in that time we had: various species of ant infestations anywhere there was food or water or moisture (including fire ants, ghost ants, crazy ants, small rd ants, small black ants, medium black ants, carpenter ants, flying freakin’ carpenter ants, etc.); centipedes biting family members in the middle of the night (I got one on my inner thigh at age 12. NOT FUN.); scorpions on the beach at church picnics; black “man bugs” (like ladybugs, except all black) on screens, sheets, toilets, ceilings, etc.; moths the size of parrots; cane spiders, among many other species: these buggers were bigger than my hand is now, and wold blithely crawl across someone’s (my baby sister) face or other body part whilst they slept *ICK* or lie in wait on the lightswitch in a dark room *ICKICKICK*; noisy geckos on the ceiling, on the screens, on the floor, in the tub, on the couch, in bed, in the salad; mice in the garage; millipedes on the front door handle; and, of course, “portagee dogs”. These delightful creatures were flying cockroaches that were large than anything but a full-grown gecko, and would run towards one’s feet when chased with a slipper. They fly into one’s personal space with no apparent thought of their own lives, and they are everywhere all year ’round. ALL of these fabulous creature are year-round guests.
Hawaii. Yeah, Paradise… for etymologists.
I am deeply sympathetic to everyone here. Especially since:
a – I grew up in a NYC apartment with a roach problem. My mom has always been a great housekeeper. Sadly, the neighbors were not so great. Also, they renovated several apartments around us, causing the filthy buggers to relocate directly into our home (they favored our kitchen and bathroom). Every morning I lost my appetite as I turned on the light and watched them run in various directions. (When you’ve learned the difference between pregnant and non-pregnant roaches, you’ve learned too much.) I thank God that that problem seems to have dissipated – because if I see even one roach now in our apartment, I’ll either have to move or kill myself, and I can’t afford to move.
b – My former roommate and I were once dive-bombed by a vicious flying Palmetto/Waterbug. The damn thing was the size of a SPARROW for pity’s sake. I’m sorry to say that I abandoned her to her fate and leaped into my room, locking the door and putting a towel at the bottom. I told her later – robbers, rapists, muggers I can handle. I’m there for ya. But bugs? I’ll tell your family you died bravely.
Okay, since we’re sharing horror stories here, I have to share the time that I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my wet head only to have a centipede CRAWL ACROSS MY FACE.
::shudders::
My mother says my screams woke the dead, and centipedes are still my personal bug nemeses. And, twenty years later, I still shake the hell out of my towels before using them.
Oh my god. Just reading half of these comments reminded me of a flea battle I had to fight against fleas who lived in my fucking carpet (and were probably brought here by plumbing contractors a few weeks prior) and had decided attacking the cat was not good enough, and so had started gnawing at me, too. Thoughtfully enough, they decided their change in their no-biting-the-humans policy three days before I was set to go on vacation, and three mere weeks before I was set to move out from it. Long story short, I had to treat all the carpeting, the cat hated me for taking him on a road trip away from home for a few hours, and he had to go on flea medication, which he hates.
The new place, the owners swore up and down, was to be flea bombed because a dog lived there before. All I know is that if my cat gets fleas again, I will scream bloody murder, because infestations freak me out.
For identifying your B3K: http://www.bugguide.net and http://www.whatsthatbug.com, both of which have pictures and scary facts about bugs. (The downside is that knowing your enemy can sometimes just feed the phobia, not that that’s what happened to me when my apartment was invaded by stink bugs, or anything.) My gram used to swear by putting sticks of Wrigley’s in the cabinets – not unwrapped, though, ew – to keep away ants, but I can’t vouch for the actual effectiveness of that.
Guido with the big ants in the bathroom: you might have carpenter ants, which like to nest in damp wood, including, say, that from which a house might be made. You can usually keep them out by spraying outside around the foundation – you can get the stuff at the hardware store and do it yourself – unless the call is coming from inside the house, so to speak. Then it might be time to call the friendly exterminator of your choice. Soon.
I’ve seen a beetle the size of a baseball before, and this was in ONTARIO in the FALL. The reason we put up with Canadian winters is because we’re not supposed to get huge bugs, but there it was. Fortunately, it was just randomly out on the road, nowhere near my domicile. None of us had the guts to try to stomp it, though. We probably should have, to keep it from breeding.
I can deal with a lot of bugs because my parents’ house gets infested with a different kind every summer: earwigs, tent caterpillars, centipedes. I had a silverfish fall on me once when I was in bed.
Much, much worse are rodents, as far as I’m concerned. I used to work in the restaurant industry and so had to get used to rats the size of housecats running into my feet, and I’ve lived in two places in Toronto that were overrun with mice. Once I had one just sitting on my kitchen table that was right out of a Disney movie: big ears, curly tail, the works. All it was missing was a uniform and a magic feather. And here I am, this thing a million times its size yelling and waving my arms and it just sits there looking at me all, “What?” It died in a trap shortly thereafter though, cheeky little fucker.
Ant ball: http://claycoleman.tripod.com/id180.htm
I have a dog that likes to hunt slugs. Wouldn’t touch the snails though.
I feel like I’m coming in too late for Sars to even be reading, but: baby powder. Swear to GAWD, I had ants using the wall in my bedroom where the headboard of my bed is as a little throughway and still finding ways in after I sealed every crack I could see! With novelty *nsync tape! Sigh. Anyway, my friend did the net search for me and came back with baby powder, and it seriously totally works. I put it everywhere the little buggers were walking or coming and all along the edges and the ones I could see died and none did ever come back. And my cat was unharmed.
I thought the ants were traumatic until my cat killed a tiny mouse right in front of me. Like, on the rug I work out on every single morning while I backed against the window shrieking. And then, after an hour of OMG shouldn’t I be better than this DRAMARAMA including my mother laughing at me over the phone, 2 am that night I get up and she’s killed another one. Sigh. Luckily the landlord turned the basement room they were using to enter into a den of poison and the cat is back to sleeping 20 hours a day and only stalking my ankles.
Still. MICE MICE MICE ZOMG!!!
I have centipedes in my bathroom ceiling, a fact which I discovered one day when I was sitting on the toilet and one dropped out of the exhaust fan and into my lap. That’ll wake you right up. Luckily I had finished peeing when I jumped up and started flailing about madly. Occasionally I will find one in my bathtub in the morning. Flush! Mostly I try to ignore them; when I found out they eat cockroaches, I decided I could tolerate an occasional centipede if it meant I would never have to see a cockroach. Roaches just skeeve me out beyond all belief — we’re talking phobia level fear.
Y’all have creeped me out for the next week. Between this and the Apartment Therapy posts recently on bedbugs, I’m going to have to give up the Internet.
Our last apartment had mice, and a totally un-fixable roach problem — we tried, hard, but the only place we didn’t find them was in the fridge. They were in the bathroom, the bedroom, living in my roommates computer (it’s good one our friends works at the Apple Store, or no one would ever have believed us), and had fiestas at night in the kitchen.
The best story, though, might still be the ladybugs. One ladybug — no big deal, they’re pretty harmless. A nest in your window frame that’s started crawling into the bedroom? Scarred the roomie and I for life. We’re still both afraid of ladybugs.
I’ve lived in Houston my whole life and as such have a WIDE variety of traumatic bug stories, but I think the most exciting one happened recently. I went to the dentist’s office, which is on the fifth floor, and pressed the elevator button; when the elevator arrived and the door opened, something huge and alarming, probably a moth, came flying out of it directly at eye-level and came within about a millimeter of rubbing its horrible bug cooties all over me.
It was only after I was in the elevator, the doors were closing, and the bug finally landed on the other side of the lobby that I was able to see that it was, in fact, a 3-inch tree roach.
One word: wasps.
I used to work at a summer camp in the Sierra Nevada, and while I could deal with the june bugs that loved to clog the bathroom sink drains and the three inch long beetles that climbed up the outside of the staff dorms, it was the wasps that gave me the heebies.
There was a nest in the light just above my room’s door, but nothing sealed them out, not the door, not the windows, not the screens over the door and the windows, nothing. My roommate and I spent most of the twelve weeks looking up nervously and walking around in a crouch whnever there was one in the room – leggy bastards flew at about five and a half feet above the floor, and neither of us were about to take a swat, miss, and have a pissed off wasp after us. Fun.
*Shudder* we are now in the midst of Spring in the Northeast … sullen, sweltering, heatstroking Spring; the time of year which has consistently proved that spontaneous generation does, in fact, exist, because these giant humongous FLIES appear in my apartment, drunkenly divebombing me and the cat indiscriminately. I had a bottle of Bug Be Dead, left behind by a previous owner, and my sister used it liberally. We then evacuated the apartment for six hours and she intimated that it was something an asthamatic should NEVER USE AGAIN. I invested in a couple of old-fashioned plastic Bug Bashers, and use them enthusiastically. I also have good results with RAVE megamaximumforeverhold hairspray, which is actually too stiff for hair, but great for killing flies, apparently. I get the occasional Encroaching Insectoid Horror because: city apartment, but my gut-twisting hatred is reserved for Mothra. I, a fabric and fashion-loving female, had never had moths before I moved into this place, and many a tender and lovely cashmere sweater has gone, holey and completely, to an early grave. Mothra dies whenever it crosses my path, accompanied by my shrieks of rage and anguish, because by the time you see an adult moth, some beloved garment has already died.
I don’t know about the chalk-line-around-the-window thing…didn’t I see that in that crap movie Skeleton Key? Only there it was to block evil voodoo spirits.
Can I add a reptile invader story? I came downstairs the other day to see a teeny tiny snake lying on the tiles in my front entry way. I got outfitted for critter removal (oven mitts and a big paper bag…idea was to sort of shove it in the bag, then dump outside). As I tried to encourage it to get in the bag, it raised up its front section and RATTLED its tail…it was a baby rattlesnake.
I still managed to shove it in the bag, only because I was worried if it slithered off into the house I would have to move. If I ever see another one I am beating it to death.
Oh, and the next day everyone at work was horrified, because apparently the babies can’t control their venom and are therefore more dangerous. Good to know!
There are two things you don’t mess around with in Texas — air conditioning and pest control. The bugs-in-the-house problem is fairly well controlled except for the giantic Wolf spider I found under a sofa pillow this morning (thanks, kitties!) and that time Shelob birthed all the spider babies ever and then died from the effort in my bathroom.
Anyway. I really just meant to post that Carl Weathers was awesome in season one of Arrested Development as Tobias’s acting coach. Awesome.
Laura, oh my Gosh!!! THe House Centipedes! I lived across the street from East Quad and we had those things! I never saw them before or since I went there. I am sitting at my desk in 98 degree heat and now I’m shivering just thinking of the little nasties.
Of course, then I moved to N. Carolina where my husband’s school had an infestation of Brown Recluses IN A DORM. People, those things have venom that can make you lose limbs!! We lived in an apartment 3 blocks away, but I didn’t go to bed without pulling the sheets all the way back and checking for spiders for months.
Re giant beetles. When I was in college, we had one that was so enormous I swear it made the refrigerator rock when it ran under it. Huge, horrifying creature. I used to have to don cowboy boots for nighttime trips to the bathroom. As awful as it was, I was even more frightened at the prospect of dealing with a squashed version of it, so it persisted in its reign of terror over my sister and me. And it was fast – so fast that we sometimes wondered if we were imagining it, but then the refrigerator would start walking around of its own accord and there was our proof.
Then, one day a friend came over wearing brand new 80’s era bright white sneakers. She asked to use the bathroom. A moment later I heard “Eeek! A bug! [stomp, flush]. She emerged saying “there was this giant black bug in there – I killed it and flushed it down the toilet.”
Near as we can tell, the blinding whiteness of the shoes confused the damn thing enough to give her time to stomp on it. End of beetle. I paid for her dinner that night.
The only bugs I have problems with in Germany are flies and slugs. Oh MY GOD are the flies ever annoying, though. I don’t think they even believe window screens are a scientific possibility here. The flies are fast little suckers, too. It is a daily battle between me and the flies right now. At least the husband is amused.
Last Thursday we started a slug jamboree on my friend’s patio. I purposely got a slug drunk (and accidentally killed it) by giving it some beer, but that’s not the creepy part. About 14 other slugs came out of the garden to EAT ITS CORPSE. I supplied some grape halves, but the other slugs really preferred THEIR DEAD FRIEND. Ew.
Thanks to this board I may not sleep very soundly tonight–so many bug horror stories. But it’s nice to know I’m not alone in my fear (dad, mom and brother all mock my reactions to nature). I just had to deal with a snake infestation in my backyard. The previous owners planted English ivy (which is of the devil) over half of the yard and in the process of ripping it out, I came to realize it is a haven to copperhead snakes. I saw 8 in one afternoon (baby ones about a foot long) and decided it was worth paying the money for the lawn guys to deal with it, esp. after my idiot dog decided tossing them around in the air was big fun. I don’t know where they are now (sorry neighbors!), but as long as they’re not in my yard, I don’t really care.
Reading all these posts has caused me to start itching uncontrollably at my desk at work.
Ants. HATE them. When I was about 14, we moved in to a newly built house in Arizona. My room was on the second floor. After getting out of the shower, I grabbed my bright teal robe out of the closet and put it on. A few minutes later, I start feeling little bites. I open the robe to find that there are THOUSANDS of black ants inside of it and all over me. I couldn’t even see the teal color of the robe. My entire closet of clothes and dresser was full of black ants. Horrifying. I’ve never worn a robe again.
Not really a bug story, but a couple weeks ago at work, we had a 6-inch lizard come in the front door. After kneeling and attempting to get it to go in a box to take outside, it ran up my pant leg. I screamed, flailed, and started ripping off my pants in the lobby. After what felt like hours, it went flying back out my pant leg and into the wall.
And it was all on the security cameras.
Anyway… I’ve sprayed Lysol on ants before and it kills them. Windex also works. Well, pretty much any household cleaner will work if you drown them in it. Good luck, Sars.
Dude. So sorry to hear about your buggin’ problems. My only horror story involved mice. They were digging up the street to work on water pipes, and the place where I live had a stone foundation, so, helloooo mice! My cat was wiggy, and I was doubly wiggy. I put out glue traps (which I will never do again), and my neighbor had to put them out of their misery for me. It makes me shudder just to think about it again. After the road work was complete, the problem seemed to go away.
GLOBAL WARMING.
Oh, you think I’m joking! But it is truth. Bugs like heat. More heat = more bugs. More bugs = more bugs finding their way into your house, including the ones you normally never see (like giant beetles). A few months ago I found a giant waterbug in the garden and I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of the apocalypse.
I had ants in my TV once–not, like, just passing through. They lived in there. They had BABIES in there. We thought it was kind of a fluke but weeks later, my mother reported ants in her clock radio. So uh, check your electronics. I guess they like the warmth?
Having lived all over, I too have a myriad of bug stories. Of the flying roaches, painful fire ant encounters, scorpion-in-the-bed, wolf spider falling out of an unrolled sleeping bag varieties.
God, I HATE bugs. *shudder*
Two pest stories specifically worth sharing here, though:
1. One night when we were living in our last apartment in Brooklyn, a HUGE cockroach (like, Louisiana quality. The biggest one I saw in NYC ever.) fell out of a crack in the ceiling and started crawling across the floor. My cat ran up to it, sniffed it, and BOLTED away to hide under the couch. Thanks, cat! Fortunately my husband got it with his size thirteens.
2. Last week I definitely girl-ed out big time when my dog brought a dead bird with no head in the house.
Me: “What has he got? What is–IT’S A BIRD! A DEAD BIRD!” (cue dancing around in a little circle, jumping up and down, wringing my hands, shrieking) “DO SOMETHING! DEAL WITH IT! A BIRD! IT’S A DEAD BIRD! DO SOMETHING!!!!”
My husband, watching me: “…wow.”
I just spent most of the last year in Georgia, and the first time we spotted the roaches, my roommate screamed loud enough to wake the dead. And then continued to do it each time she saw one, or even thought she saw one. That got a little old. It was also the first time I ever saw roaches after living my life in the desert and all I have to say is eewww!
I have had extensive experience with ants, however. An apartment I lived in while in college had ants in the shower! I don’t know what they liked about it, considering we did our best to drown them every day, but nothing we did got rid of them. Finally we moved out and left them to the landlord and the next tenant.
Dude, I can tell you from experience, you can sweep, you can wipe up every mess, and you can still get ants. God. I hate ants. Florida is like bug central. Also, did you know ants eat clothes? Becuase they do. I left a pile of clothes on the floor for a day and, I swear to you, the pile of clothes was FILLED with ants. Not my pantry, my pile of clothing. And my husband’s t-shirt had a hole in it.
Also, in Florida, the little fuckers bite and leave nasty pussy bumps on your skin that itch for days. Augh.