You guys would have loved our last house before we moved from St. Louis. When we sold it, the home inspection service hired by the buyer found an ecosystem at work: there were termites in two areas of the bandboard around the basement, there were carpenter ants eating the termites, and there were fiddlebacks eating the carpenter ants. The inspector refused to go near the crawl space under the rest of the house. The place seemed fine to me, as they were hidden from view.
there were termites in two areas of the bandboard around the basement, there were carpenter ants eating the termites, and there were fiddlebacks eating the carpenter ants.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
It took three separate kinds of treatment, each critter-specific and all applied at once, then we had to evacuate (with the cats, of course) for 24 hours.
The amazing thing is that we never saw the problem up close. It was all behind the insulation that was up against the bandboards and between the floor joists in the basement. It was invisible.
Well, I can't resist this story. About a month ago, I went out to the garage to do some cleaning...always a daunting task considering our general clutter there...and I felt something land on my head.
Instinctively, I brushed my hand downward, from the top of my head to the bottom of my chin. Unfortunately, what was on my head was a medium size brown spider and in the brushing move, I swooped him into my mouth and.....accidentally ate him.
I guess I have never really minded spiders all that much. My grandmother always said they were good luck. Now mice, on the other hand, that is where I lose all rationality.
Augh. AUGH. AAUUUUUGH. I'm going to swear off eating entirely now, kthnx.
Mice don't bother me on a visceral level, though I no longer let them live due to them being literal plaguebearers 'round these parts. It's interesting what animals bug people for no good reason... I've never understood what's so freaky about snakes, for example. I've always actively liked them.
LabRat, I totally sympathize. I freaking hate spiders. It's either something primal or else it goes back to the sheer horror and dread of reading about Shelob when I was a kid. My husband isn't bothered by spiders, but will dispatch them at my request -- by squashing them with his bare fingers. Bleccchhhh.
Mark: egads.
Snakes? No problem. I had a 5' royal python as a pet in high school. I used to wear him as an accessory to school and scare the socks off teachers.
The only other creatures that creep me out are bats. Rabid, germy, rodents with wings. Ick. Not good when you're living in the battiest state in the union. They get into buildings and have a tendency to dive-bomb people until they find a way out. Still, they do keep flying insects at bay, so it's not all bad...
Markadelphia: I learned not to grin too wide while riding a bicycle so long ago that I can't remember the incident, but somehow accidentally ingesting a spider seems so much worse than a flying bug...
OTOH, coasting my bike down the longest, steepest hill in our town built up quite a lot of speed, and taking a fly up the nostril just plain hurt.
Sarah: Stingray hates bats (he has a good reason), but they're generally in my category of "why don't people like these?". I actually think they're adorable- I got to do a short little behavioral study on pipistrelles and Rafineseque's long-eared bat and always had to resist the urge to awww at them when I found them.
Maybe this is a case where cuteness correlates with proximity. From the perspective of being dive-bombed in a small classroom (and also smelling the guano as one drives underneath the freeway overpasses where they tend to hang out), they don't seem terribly cute. But I can sort of see the potential. Sort of.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2007/11/quote-of-day.html (17 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Man cans?
I'm definitely harboring fantasies about taking a lighter to that damn web over the door.
Got Lysol spray? A lighter and a can of Lysol make a great flamethrower.
Yeah. The real problem is more that Stingray would never forgive me if I killed the fat bitch.
And now that I'm on to your little plan...
'Scuse me, folks. I'm going to go turn the porch light on so she can make it through the night now that the temps have dropped below freezing.
You guys would have loved our last house before we moved from St. Louis. When we sold it, the home inspection service hired by the buyer found an ecosystem at work: there were termites in two areas of the bandboard around the basement, there were carpenter ants eating the termites, and there were fiddlebacks eating the carpenter ants. The inspector refused to go near the crawl space under the rest of the house. The place seemed fine to me, as they were hidden from view.
there were termites in two areas of the bandboard around the basement, there were carpenter ants eating the termites, and there were fiddlebacks eating the carpenter ants.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
It took three separate kinds of treatment, each critter-specific and all applied at once, then we had to evacuate (with the cats, of course) for 24 hours.
The amazing thing is that we never saw the problem up close. It was all behind the insulation that was up against the bandboards and between the floor joists in the basement. It was invisible.
Well, I can't resist this story. About a month ago, I went out to the garage to do some cleaning...always a daunting task considering our general clutter there...and I felt something land on my head.
Instinctively, I brushed my hand downward, from the top of my head to the bottom of my chin. Unfortunately, what was on my head was a medium size brown spider and in the brushing move, I swooped him into my mouth and.....accidentally ate him.
I guess I have never really minded spiders all that much. My grandmother always said they were good luck. Now mice, on the other hand, that is where I lose all rationality.
Pardon me....
I think I'm gonna hurl.
Augh. AUGH. AAUUUUUGH. I'm going to swear off eating entirely now, kthnx.
Mice don't bother me on a visceral level, though I no longer let them live due to them being literal plaguebearers 'round these parts. It's interesting what animals bug people for no good reason... I've never understood what's so freaky about snakes, for example. I've always actively liked them.
Gotta nuke em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Beat ya to the punchline, Phelps!
LabRat, I totally sympathize. I freaking hate spiders. It's either something primal or else it goes back to the sheer horror and dread of reading about Shelob when I was a kid. My husband isn't bothered by spiders, but will dispatch them at my request -- by squashing them with his bare fingers. Bleccchhhh.
Mark: egads.
Snakes? No problem. I had a 5' royal python as a pet in high school. I used to wear him as an accessory to school and scare the socks off teachers.
The only other creatures that creep me out are bats. Rabid, germy, rodents with wings. Ick. Not good when you're living in the battiest state in the union. They get into buildings and have a tendency to dive-bomb people until they find a way out. Still, they do keep flying insects at bay, so it's not all bad...
Markadelphia: I learned not to grin too wide while riding a bicycle so long ago that I can't remember the incident, but somehow accidentally ingesting a spider seems so much worse than a flying bug...
OTOH, coasting my bike down the longest, steepest hill in our town built up quite a lot of speed, and taking a fly up the nostril just plain hurt.
Sarah: Stingray hates bats (he has a good reason), but they're generally in my category of "why don't people like these?". I actually think they're adorable- I got to do a short little behavioral study on pipistrelles and Rafineseque's long-eared bat and always had to resist the urge to awww at them when I found them.
Maybe this is a case where cuteness correlates with proximity. From the perspective of being dive-bombed in a small classroom (and also smelling the guano as one drives underneath the freeway overpasses where they tend to hang out), they don't seem terribly cute. But I can sort of see the potential. Sort of.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>