I do not handle bugs of any sort very well. A post by my friend Russ recently brought this to mind. We live in a wooded area, so we get a vast array of creepy crawlies that manage to find their way into our home. I'm paranoid about pesticide spraying, so I have to put up with them. And when a big boy gets inside, I usually pray that Husband will be arriving home shortly. I have even been known to go get my neighbor, who recently grabbed a snake bare handed by my front door. Shout out to George!Over the years, I've been forced to face my fears by using creative ways to get rid of them. I handled our carpenter ant situation by telling Husband that he needed to replace the majority of the boards in our 1970's redwood deck. Problem solved!
Wolf spider on the kitchen floor? I had the kids run out to the sandbox, grab a big bucket and we plopped that bucket upside down on Mr. Spider Fangs. Not the surprise Husband enjoys coming home to, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Smaller spiders? The vacuum cleaner works wonders. I either run them over or get out the hose attachment and suck them up off the walls. Surprisingly enough, even with their eight legs, I still manage to outrun them.
Crickets/Grasshoppers in the house? A bit big for the vacuum. I've found that shutting the door to that room and rolling up towels to block their exit under the door works well. Their sounds will eventually give them away when Husband opens the door later.
My worst case scenario is the centipede, which I face up against about once per week in the summer. Spraying them with Lysol or hair spray slows them down and they usually die within five minutes. Then, the vacuum is rolled out of the closet once again.
Amazingly enough, I'm not quite as bad with wasps and yellow jackets!
I hear ya' loud and clear on this one! When I absolutely must deal with a bug (when ignoring and avoiding is just not an option) I am well known for stepping on them with very thick-soled shoes, using large books to smash them, or if they are caught in a tub or sink drowning the little buggers. Then to pick up their dead little remains I get about four paper towels all together so I can pick them up without any chance that they will somehow touch me and then throw them in the garbage. I have also used the vacuum on small spiders. However, I'm always afraid they'll still be alive inside the vacuum bag and will make their way out to hunt me down.
ReplyDeleteYou need one of those bug vacuums. Sucks them up and quietly kills them. Yeah!
ReplyDeleteCentipeded are my worst, too. I call them devil bugs The rest I ususally relocate.
ReplyDeleteHey, I did the guilty pleasures meme and it's up.
Yep, no centipedes down here. (We had what seemed like tons in NJ.) Oddly, the bugs that don't bother you much, I give the widest berth.
ReplyDeleteYou and Queenie. Ain't no fun coming home to the PANIC and then have to manage the critter ..... but then, the critter's the easy part. Queenie jumping, spinning, and running every time she feels an itch for days after gets old. Funny, but old.
ReplyDeleteMy basement is full of critter traps and I spray the foundation every month to reduce the crawlies. What else can a man do?
There have been more than one occasion where I've come home from work to find a bucket or bowl sitting upside down on the kitchen floor. We have lots of those big black (harmless) water bugs, with all the humidity here. And any spider or bug freaks her out. "Come quick, there's a huge spider in here!" she says, and I run in to find a tiny 1/2 inch spider on the bathroom floor. Seriously?
ReplyDeleteYup, I know the reasons my wife married me:
1) Kill bugs for her,
2) Flush the goldfish when they die (she has a phobia of being anywhere near dead fish), and
3) Reach things in the tall cabinets.
Boy, you make me really glad for Molly's 'tomboy-ish' childhood. She takes a 'Death to You and All Your Children' approach to all bugs in our house. I tend to take more of a 'live and let live' approach, except for the really annoying (eg, moths and mosquitos) or potentially sting-inducing ones. . . Centipedes definitely fall under the heading of 'annoying'. . .
ReplyDeleteI hate it when I finally lift that last load of laundry off the floor and lo and behold a discusting critter is attempting to make a home there.
ReplyDeleteI grab a kleenex, and crush him, hearing that little crunch is music to my ears. :O)
I can handle the murder and disposal of most insect/spider bodies.
ReplyDeleteBut moths? Pure evil. Seriously, any creature that turns to powder and slime once squished is straight from the underworld. I've seen those movies and I give moths a wide berth.
Short of having my husband around, I have gone out in the neighborhood and hunted down my oldest son to kill the influx of giant spiders we've had in our house lately. Of course, that means finding the spider again after it's wandered around the house while I've been looking for my son, but it's worth it to avoid squishing it's bursting body between a wad of tissue.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the last one I made my son was so huge that even he was a bit terrified of it!
I suppose you'd really rather I didn't mention that, among the photos that 4M brought back with him from the Dominican Republic, were a couple of a very large, very hairy tarantula that wandered thru their worksite one day. . .
ReplyDeleteI don't like silverfish. They are all twisty-turney as they dart around. They just scream "DIRTY".
ReplyDeleteTruey - LOVE IT....I do the 4 paper towel thing too when I must. I've never had a spider escape the vacuum bag. I think the suction dismembers them :(
ReplyDeleteRhonda - Aren't those for little kids? I've only seen plastic colored ones!
Agent - I'm worried that relocating is just an invitation to return.
Russ - I guess my phobia involves the number of legs and the crawling. Flying things don't "bug" me.
X - I don't think I'm quite as bad as Queenie. I don't have any residual trauma, though I do tend to keep my eyes open for a few days.
FTN - College Daughter is notorious for claiming to see a huge spider and it is the size of a ladybug! So, does that mean your wife doesn't eat any sort of fish?
ReplyDeleteDesmond - I have no idea why I'm so bad. My mom was a farm girl and would kill anything.
Jody - The "crunching" noise is what freaks me out the most!
Flutter - Moths are gross, but I don't mind killing them. The stain they leave behind is ridiculously hard to remove from white walls though :(
FADKOG - My son is not fond of killing spiders, unfortunately. He's always worried it could be a brown recluse!
Des - Funny thing, but Husband's last girlfriend before me had pet tarantulas. WEIRD!
Trooper - College Daughter's dorm had silverfish and she was NOT a happy camper last spring.
OK, I wasn't gonna tell this story, but YOU'RE MAKING ME DO IT. . .
ReplyDeleteIn my freshman dorm, there was a guy who had two pet tarantulas (named Herman and George, as I recall). One Friday evening, we were having a 'wrestling trounament' on the floor - guys were paired off, wrestling each other, all up and down the hall. Suddenly, Harry (the tarantula guy; I kid you not), who wasn't wrestling, burst out of his room, screaming, "EVERYBODY FREEZE! Herman escaped!"
So we all spent the next five minutes checking each other's backs for Herman-goo. . . (Herman ended up to be hiding under Harry's bed, I think. . .)
One time in Mexico with my then future-wife's family I had a dream that a tarantula was crawling up my bed. I woke up and saw, yes, a huge hairy tarantula about an inch away from my neck. I was out of the bed in a flash, but the sucker was now hidden in my sheets. Instead of waking everyone up and crying like a baby I had the presence of mind to scoop up the sheets and shake them out the second story window.
ReplyDeleteDes - I'm holding my ears!
ReplyDeleteWorried - Yet another reason for me to never visit Mexico. You think well on your feet!
lol, i have to giggle about this because i am the resident bug dispatcher. my husband is scared to death of spiders and has been known to squeal like a girl when spying them.
ReplyDeleteWolf spider on the kitchen floor? WOLF spiders?!?! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!
ReplyDeleteOMG... I don't do big spiders well. lol
That and those big dang roaches that can FLY! (what the h?)
I'm with ya here, girl... ixnay the creepy crawlies. lol
Lime - I figured with you holding all those snakes, you are NOT a pantywaist!
ReplyDeleteLB - I would lose it if I had a flying cockroach in da house!
I so had the vacuum cleaner handy when I lived by myself in an old house that was a little buggy! I would even keep siran wrap over the end of the hose just in case they tried to escape!
ReplyDelete