What’s Your Tolerance For The Incursions Of Unthinking Beasts?
Luigi’s recent mentions of living with sheep and lambs got me wondering – how comfortable are we, Deadsplintermammals, about sharing our space with other creatures who aren’t pets?
A few days ago I went into my backyard, and I found the dried remains of a squirrel. Curled up bones with bits of fur still attached, but so dried up that our dog hadn’t bothered to find it and chew it up. How did it get there?
After sitting around for a while and checking out the scene, I noticed that crows were messing around in our neighbor’s yard, digging and scratching and bringing in bits of food. My best guess is one of them had dug this up, found it wasn’t worth eating, and had dropped it in our yard.
Fine, whatever. I buried it and moved on.
But I have to admit that I don’t appreciate the carpenter bees that seem overly interested in wood attached to my house. I don’t like the rabbits which chew on my plants. One time our AC died, and a repair guy diagnosed the problem as a rodent which had chewed out some wires, because apparently rodents just seem to like to the taste of wire insulation.
GRRRR.
Are you a live and let live person? Or do you have lines you draw, where the fly that gets inside is allowed to buzz, or the random spider can spin its web or else get shepherded outside, but scorpions and silverfish get the death sentence?
Let’s talk about how much space we can share with creatures who aren’t bred for companionship like cats and dogs, who roam around, and definitely don’t consider us family.
I never thought I’d be OK with the animal kingdom beyond cats and dogs, but you wanna live in paradise it comes with the territory.
I’ve even handled snakes and not in that cool religious fervor kind of way, neither.
We get baby garter snakes in my yard sometimes which I see when I mow the lawn, and I’m fine with picking them up to save them from the mower.
We’ve also gotten big black snakes, and those I steer clear of.
I love finding lil danger noodles and murder spagherters. Aka nonvenomous snakes acting fierce.
Outside my home, sure no problem. I have rabbits and raccoons coming thru. I even had morning doves nest in the alcove above my door but they never hatched eggs because the crows got them.
Inside… Live and let die. Except Spiders. I will tolerate webs if they feast on the other bugs.
I once had a nest of wasps in between the wall and insulation. The sound drove me nuts till I found out what it was. That day i suited up in overalls and bug jacket armed with the finest bug nerve gas made by SC Johnson (a family company don’t you know…assholes) and nuked the nest like Ripley in Aliens. I would have nuked them from orbit too but once was enough.
My former housemate used to take his cereal bowl ( and loaded right to the rim) full of sugar laced cereal down to the basement with him when he played video games. I didn’t care till I found a trail of sticky milk drops on my floor.
Suddenly we got ants who love sugar. I was pissed.
Nuked the nest… Nearly nuked him when he claimed it wasn’t his cereal but mine… I don’t eat cereal so his bullshit excuse kind of blew up in his face. The fact he tried to blame me set me off. At the time I just put it off to him being a jackass. I didn’t realize it would be a pattern with him.
Paper wasp and hornet stings are really, really awful.
If it’s in my basement, I just shrug and go fine this is your home until the house centipedes get you. The foundation isn’t good, it’s not like I can keep bugs from getting into the basement so might as well accept the situation downstairs.
Upstairs bugs get squished if found. It’s not common. I used to have a bad silverfish problem in my bathroom but once I got the shower faucet replaced that conveniently stopped. I guess there was a slow drip I never noticed.
They were everywhere. He whined more about them than I did… IIRC. That made me laugh a bit.
One reason I tend to carry bugs out if I can is I don’t like the squish juice.
If I find a cricket in the basement in the winter, sometimes I’ll put in a jar and freeze it, then put it out in the bird feeder as a snack for some lucky bird.
Oh that’s understandable. Often I spray with high hold hair spray and that just kills bugs. I am not sure what it does to the inside of my lungs, but works to kill many bugs.
My parents had issues with raccoons trying to enter the house. A mom with her pups.
Dad wanted to kill them. Mom was upset and my sister hired a really good humane animal removal expert.
He got them and removed them without too much hassle. Dad was upset about the price… He was in cheap old man mode at the time.
We’ve got all kinds of bugs. It’s Florida. It’s a never-ending battle against roaches, silverfish, and especially ants. The stupid ants swarm a couple of times a year, so I end up putting out tons of ant bait (pro tip: You gotta use ant bait. Spraying them just kills the ones you see. Actually, that applies to roaches, too.) I spread insecticide all around the house a couple of times a year to try to keep them out.
Lizards run inside sometimes. We try to extract them humanely, but it’s not always possible. Sometimes we find their shriveled corpses.
Wasps, specifically mud daubers, love our atrium. Quite a few have slipped inside this year. Those end up meeting their end on one of my tennis racket bug zappers. I don’t tolerate big honking wasps buzzing around the house.
And, well, mosquitoes. Nothing much works against them except the bug zappers.
My sister used to live in Miami and I remember the lizards that used to cling to their house. I got a sense of how much was flying around for them to snack on.
Have you tried garlic spray for the mosquitoes? That worked for us in Montreal where it is extra hot and humid in the summer.
*shrugs*
tbh….if it dont hurt me i wont hurt it…unless its being very annoying
generally my rule
How much wildlife is hopping around where you are? I know London, for example, has foxes who ride the commuter trains and hedgehogs rooting around in vegetable gardens, but I don’t know about the other side of the Nordsee.
deers hogs and foxes….and wolves now
bug wise nothing exotic either
boring country this…the most dangerous thing is pissed off sheep
(you know…if your not an idiot….wild boar will fuck you up….but only if you re the kinda idiot what sees them and thinks..oooo…selfie?)
even the sheep mostly leave you alone if y0u give them the space…..they can be grumpy fuckers tho
Wild boar scare the skin off of me. I’m glad we don’t have them around me.
i dunno…..im lucky to live in where all wild life is smaller than me
i wouldnt pick a fight with a boar like…..but you know…you really gotta try
is very rare they see you and attack
if attacked by boar safe bet would be….you were an idiot that got too close
There’s a pair of black-capped chickadees who’ve slowly made a hole in an impossible to reach spot of my house. I’ve hung all kinds of reflective bird deterrents down from my roof to where they plan on nesting. It only seems to stop them when it’s windy. So now I’m that crazy neighbor lady who yells at the birds and sprays near enough to scare them but not actually wet them with the hose.
At this point there’s probably not much to do except wait until the babies have grown up and then seal the hole.The good news is birds that small won’t do too much harm. They weigh about 1% as much as a chicken.