Just wanted to note for the record that not only are the trees all blooming and everything is turning green around here, but my bats are back and I had three spider sightings in my house. A nice daddy long legs in the guest bathroom, a very solid spider has made a web right over the sliding door in the back and it is loaded with nasty critters who would otherwise sully my household, and there was a nice spider right above my stove who is doing his work eating up the vile bugs who make it that far into the house.
But the best is the bats. I sat on the back porch for a couple hours tonight relaxing in between period of the hockey game, and on several dozen occasions I got dive bombed by my bats who live in the back yard in the eaves and in the pine trees.
As I have stated before, this is a no kill sanctuary for bats and spiders, because I love how many bugs they eat and how they never screw with me the way bees and wasps might. Sure, if you don’t get how good they are (I’ll take four bats and a couple spiders over 500 citronella candles which only attract moths and smell like shit) they can be creepy, but if you look past that you can really gain the benefit of their existence and you should be happy they have chosen your house to protect.
Plus, I haven’t killed anything other than a housefly or mosquito for decades, brake hard for possums, squirrels and other critters on the road, and even cup stink bugs and throw them out of the house rather than step on them. I still eat meat, but I have just decided I am not killing things ever again and I have been pretty true to this for several years. I just think all these creatures exist for a reason, and it would be really arrogant for me to take things into my own hand. Technically, this house is a no kill zone, but I know the murder my bats and spiders are committing and I approve.
So. Am I a hypocrite or a lunatic or both?
Culture of Truth
perhaps, both, or neither… I’m pretty much in the same vein, although I was never a hunter, and I have no bats but lots of deer in the backyard.*
*plus I hate spiders
dp
I love my bats, and I’m tolerant of my spiders. Mosquitos and cockroaches can Suck. On. This.
moot23
I’d say you’re probably both a hypocrite and a lunatic, but in a nice way ;-)
PsiFighter37
I don’t like spiders, mainly because I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve been bitten by a few in my apartment in the past. Of course, it could just be some random bed bugs, which, given I live in NYC, is probably not out of the question.
But good on you for being friendly with the bugs. I do not want any in my house and will get rid of them with extreme prejudice if I come across them.
Violet
I operate pretty much the same way, but have had to kill stinkbugs on my tomatoes or I wouldn’t have any tomatoes.
Since moving to this house, we’ve been organic and pesticide-free. Migrating the yard and garden has been an experience. We’ve gone through plagues of various types as the ecosystem has tried to balance itself. Last year the stinkbugs were insane and I eventually had to give up on the tomatoes. This year I’m hoping more natural predators are in place. Early signs are very encouraging.
lojasmo
Okay. The strangest damn thing happened. When we got home from dinner, the furnace fan was not functioning, but the antique, long nonfunctional clock my dad gave me was working. When Lo unplugged the clock, the furnace fan started back up.
Creepy.
erlking
Daddy Longlegs, while very cool—and arachnids–aren’t spiders. They’re Opiliones. /pedant.
I can’t help it.
lojasmo
@PsiFighter37:
Bed bugs are NOT random. If you have them, you will get bit…every night…multiple times.
Xecky Gilchrist
I’ve finally gotten to be no-kill for the same reasons with these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutigera_coleoptrata
Though they still make my skin crawl. the first time I saw one I thought it was some hideously mutated cockroach and I about screamed.
beltane
My husband is 6’4″, 260 lbs, and deathly afraid of spiders. I, on the other hand, prefer spiders to mosquitoes so they’re allowed free run of the porch. Bats are creatures I appreciate in the abstract or, as my great-grandmother would say “I love them from far.”
lojasmo
@erlking:
THere are two different animals known as daddy long legs. One is a spider, one is not.
Emma
I live in Florida, Paradise for all sort of creepy-crawlies. I think the only thing we ever kill are the damn Palmetto bugs and the mosquitoes. Lizards and frogs are carefully taken outside, and we use no pesticides in the garden. And I always plant one or two butterfly food flower beds.
mai naem
Apart from roaches and ants in the house, bugs are okay. I’m a veg and do not make a big deal out of it except to say I am when I’m offered non-veg food. I’ve still had smart alecs ask me if I’m a hypocrite because I wear leather shoes. I make a real effort to not use animal products. Just the food is hard enough to check every freaking label. I don’t wear leather clothing, no leather furniture etc. but,yes, I wear leather shoes. Whatever.
TaMara (BHF)
Finally someone gets it. Thanks for the bat/spider love JC.
I’m allergic to spiders, but still don’t kill, I move them outside whenever possible.
One night I had the pleasure of watching a large group of bats fly overhead while I sat on my porch. Since I don’t hang out at cave entrances, this was the largest colony I’d ever seen before – probably about 10-15. It was cool.
But cockroaches can die a horrible death. My fear/loathing is irrational, but there it is.
Suffern ACE
I am fascinated by insects, like I am all critters. I like to hear other people’s tales about their encounters with them. Emphasis on other people’s. last week I got finished with a compendium book that went through about a hundred or so I invertebrates that spread disease or destroy crops and their life cycles.
cbear
I commented on this last night but its worth saying again:
The new series “Rectify” on Sundance Channel is fantastically good, and is one of the best written, acted, and directed shows I have seen in many years. (And Abigail Spencer is simply beautiful)
I really hope people will give it a look because it is truly brilliant.
* Did anyone else catch the premiere on Monday?
The Fat Kate Middleton
Welcome to my world. And every spider gets carried gently outdoors.
PeakVT
So. Am I a hypocrite or a lunatic or both?
You think too much. Try drinking more.
lojasmo
I vote lunatic.
? Martin
Huh. Forgot some people enjoy periods without spiders. They’re ever present here. Killed two black widows just this evening.
@TaMara (BHF): Don’t herd the black widows. Just kill them. It’s okay. They reproduce fast enough.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@TaMara (BHF): Sorry, dear Tam … cockroach get carried outside here as gently as spiders. I know … crazy, crazy. But we don’t have the kind of roaches you do, I suspect. Just little ones.
Culture of Truth
If I found a tiger in the bathroom that would be cool, but spiders freak me out.
Suffern ACE
@Culture of Truth: I guess if I met a tiger, already being in the bathroom would be convenient.
MattR
@Culture of Truth: Not only is that woman cool under pressure, but she is a good parent as well.
Tim
That’s all nice and good, and I agree with the sentiments, but tell me what happens when you have a rat infestation?
Mike E
Same here, I even catch and release cockroaches tho I don’t shed any tears if they get a bit mangled in the process ;-)
Bedbugs are pretty fucking awful. It took me being gone from my attic apartment for 4 days, with the a.c. turned off during a 100° hot spell, to kill them off for good. I was so lucky, knowing what others go through during a similar infestation. Never again.
Oh: No bats, no tequila.
ETA @Tim: KILL with extreme prejudice, mice too. Disease vectors.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Culture of Truth: I live in Iowa, had a mountain lion walk in front of me about ten feet away. It was very cool. No children around, I was protected, so no real fear … just awe,
MattR
@Suffern ACE: Well I thought that’s what an accident was.
(EDIT: First you say it, then you do it.)
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Tim: Lots of cats? Adoption time, I think.
PeakVT
I have to admit my dump is a kill zone, though I do try to minimize the carnage. Flies, mosquitoes, and house centipedes are all targeted. Spiders are spared, and seed bugs are ejected. I don’t get anything else.
MattR
@Tim: Why do you think John got Tunch and why do you think he is so
bigfloofy?@PeakVT: I had a small infestation of ants in the bathroom recently. I killed a bunch but one escaped my wrath. I was going to reward him by allowing him to return home safely, but I had recently seen the Matrix and got worried that he was “the one” and would lead the ant revolution against me. So I had to kill him too.
Roger Moore
@Tim:
What do you think Tunch, Lily, and Rosie are for? Pets aren’t just fun to have around the house; they are actually helpful at eliminating pests.
johnny aquitard
Drunk?
Or irredeemably metrosexual?
Just kidding.
Honestly, I’d send my kids over for the afternoon. You’d be like a Dennis the Menace’s Mr. Wilson’s Mr.Wilson. But even mo’ betta cause there’s doggies and kittehs.
They’d show up on your stoop, they’d ring the bell about 5 times, then twice more as you came to the door. And you’d come to the door and you’d grump at them about don’t they have some papers to pedal? And they’d see through you instantly and bum rush the door, whoopin’ and hollerin’ and bowling you aside and then they’d be in yer base killin ur doods (which happens to involves lots of doggie and kitteh playtime) and you’d be stuck with them until dinner time.
Heh.
? Martin
@MattR: Best way to handle ants is with Windex. Works great.
eemom
Totally with you on spiders, Cole. Honest, hardworking pillars of the ecosystem they are, and besides……Charlotte.
HATE those fucking stink bugs though. Maybe they serve a purpose somewhere…..but you DO know that their presence here is due to some fucked up import from China or Japan? And that their existence here is purely fucking things up and they have no natural predators? Flush ’em, I say.
graves007
I think that mentality is awesome. I do the same. Perhaps some giant aliens will one day visit us earthlings and decide to stomp us out of existence. After all, humans are far more annoying and destructive than any bats or spiders. If anyone deserves getting stomped on, it’s us.
RepubAnon
No, not hypocritical … you’ve just outsourced the bug disposal to the spiders and bats. Cats do a pretty good job on moths…
catdevotee
So glad to know we aren’t the only household in which spiders are captured and gently placed outside. There are lots of spiders here in rural Oregon, so for periods of time it’s once a day or more. Thank the gods, we don’t have many mosquitoes… but maybe that’s because of all the spiders. My one real phobia is roaches, especially the horrid palmetto bugs we had in our previous home in Texas. They apparently don’t live here at all. We haven’t seen a roach of any kind in the 6 or so years we’ve lived here.
We did have a mouse who somehow got into the trunk of the car. We eventually were able to trap it in a catch-alive with a lure of peanut butter on cracker, then when we tried to dump the little thing out in the woods, it didn’t want to leave the trap! It actually held on even when turned upside down. I think it hoped we’d continue to bring it delicious dinners.
Morzer
@erlking:
Bah, that’s just your opilion!
Jennifer
Clearly there are no “palmetto” bugs where you live.
Let’s be honest – they aren’t “palmetto” bugs – they’re huge fucking flying roaches. Die roach, DIE!
eemom
The real question though, is what about trolls?
Gently place outside…..or stomp/flush?
Discuss.
Suzanne
We have bark scorpions and black widows and brown recluses. KILL KILL KILL.
I even got another cat to kill them for me.
lefthanded compliment
I think your behavior is both rational and empathetic. Don Marquis said it best:
twas an elderly mother spider
grown gaunt and fierce and gray
with her little ones crouched beside her
who wept as she sang this lay
curses on these here swatters
what kills off all the flies
for me and my little daughters
unless we eats we dies
-“archy and mehitabel,” 1927
Morzer
@eemom:
Neuter them and then treat them as squeaky entertainment.
MattR
@eemom: Use Windex?
MoeLarryAndJesus
A bat ended up in my house last fall and I managed to maneuver it out with a broom without hurting it. It was one amazing animal – it swooped around the place in 3 rooms for about 5 minutes without hitting anything.
Bats amaze me. I would never hurt one knowingly. One crashed into my windshield 20 years ago and got trapped under the wiper blade (it was raining) and I’m still sorry I couldn’t save the little guy.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: You obviously haven’t met my dogs.
MattR
The guy whose boat was all shot up doesn’t want any of the money the public has offered.
OTOH, this is CNN reporting it so anything is possible.
MonkeyBoy
“I haven’t killed anything other than a housefly or mosquito for decades”
If you’ve never had hornworms on your tomato plants then you must live in some magical place.
JCT
@Suzanne: Ditto. Found a black widow in my workroom last week – freaked the hell out of me. Hoping at least one of our cats will be a fine warrior against the bark scorpions.
Suffern ACE
@Suzanne: I thought the advantage of living in the southwest was that if your needed to get rid of insects, you could just release a few geckos and be done with them.
state22
WARNING WILL ROBINSON
I’m so glad to hear your bats are back.
Bees, bats and frogs are the canaries in our Global Coal Mine.
As you know bee colony collapse disorder is a real problem for farmers.
And, Bats have had a similar killer problem – sometimes called white nose disease. See, spring return bats . But hundreds of mosquito and fly eating bat colonies have been wiped out in the last 10 years. Mites, bacteria, viruses, genetic problems… all have been postulated, but none proved —- just like bees.
Also, another bellwether species – frogs have also had a similar collapse: frogs
Thanks for supporting your local bats.
Punchy
I too love and protect my bats. The softball team wouldnt have it any other way.
As for spiders, I try to feed them whenever possible. I feel bad playing God with the captured moths, but whatev.
YellowJournalism
@eemom: They sell Napalm over the counter?
Comrade Mary
As long as you’re not wearing a fetching blue frock while issuing orders in High Valyrian, it’s all good.
hamletta
Water crickets, man. I hate those fuckers, but I don’t kill them, because that would be disgusting. My late, lamented calico would catch them for me and eat ’em up like candy—I’d find the odd leg here and there.
Sadly, tuxedo kitty can’t be bothered to earn her keep.
GregB
I just wanted to chime in and apologize for the gerbil-brained shitheel in the NH House representative who verbalized her support for Glenn Beck’s false flag rantings.
seaboogie
John,
Am down with you on the spider front, and bats too – though we don’t seem to get too many of them around here. I have a badass lady-spider in a cobweb sort of web attached to a floorlamp just inside a sliding glass door here – aka “Genius”! I’ve seen her kill what is probably another lady spider of the same species, and what was likely a smaller male and her mate in the web in the last few days. There is a blob that looks like a spider version of a meteor which I assume is where the baby spiders are, because if I blow on her when she is away from it, she runs up to it. I wish that I had a better macro feature on my camera so that I could post it – it’s pretty cool.
What was really cool, though, is that there is another much more spindly spider of another family in a web also attached to the lamp. And I watched it try to wrap up a very slender beetle-ish insect and thought it had it, but then the beetle-ish bug shrugged off the spider silk from the hard outer wing-shell, and rolled it up into a little ball and got away, while the spider seemed to be sort of all “fuck it, it probably would have tasted like shit anyway”. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands…
nancydarling
@MonkeyBoy: Ditto to the hornworms plus Japanese Beetles.
I’ve got just two things to say to that, Cole—chiggers and ticks. I’m on board for bats and spiders though
trollhattan
We have black widows, which I dispatch with vigor. Mosquitoes are the devil’s spawn, being the planet’s most effective disease vector, and which I’ll happily kill, then kill some more.
The rest, other than termites, powder-post beetles and Argentine ants, I tolerate or welcome, depending.
It’s already summer. In April. Haven’t worn a jacket in quite awhile and am running the whole house fan at ten-o’clock. This ain’t right.
Ash Can
In this household, if spiders stay up by the ceiling they’re allowed to build their webs and eat their bugs in peace. If they climb down, they get shown the door, unless they’re the little yellow bitey things, in which case they get dispatched. I don’t like it when M-80 or I get bitten, and I really, really don’t like it when Bottle Rocket gets bitten. Silverfish likewise get smooshed because they eat paper. Ants also tend to meet an unhappy end once inside the house.
But that’s the extent of the mayhem that takes place here. Anything else that finds its way inside is shown the door without harm. And outside, I feed the birds (and all the other critters who like bird seed), avoid disturbing spider webs, let yummy clover take over the grass so that the bunnies have their treats, and walk with my head down to avoid stepping on bugs on the sidewalk. I love sharing my neighborhood with critters, although I’d draw the line if we had rat problems. Fortunately, this is not the case — the combination of heavy plastic city garbage cans, conscientious neighbors, and the presence of hawks, coyotes, and feral cats seem to be doing the trick.
Morzer
“The lunatic, the lover and the poet/Are of imagination all compact…”
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
I still have never seen a real live black widow and I’ve lived out here for over 20 years. This is a good thing — I would probably burst a blood vessel screaming if I ever did spot one.
Charlotte and Annie managed to hunt down a spider the other day — I had to squish it to put it out of its misery.
Punchy
@trollhattan: For comparison, its late April in KS and its currently snowing. Wanna trade?
trollhattan
@Punchy:
Would offer to meet halfway if I weren’t afraid I’d end up in Colorado Springs.
Ash Can
I should also add that houseflies and mosquitos, naturally, are killed without remorse in this household.
@MoeLarryAndJesus: We had a bat in our basement a few months ago. As far as we could tell, it got in through a loose dryer vent. It was the most amazing damned aviator I’d ever seen. And it made for an extraordinarily entertaining scene with the husband and me, with both of us alternately waving towels and cardboard box lids, trying to chase it through the door we had propped open, and diving for cover as the thing came rocketing toward us. Happily, it did eventually find the open door and zipped through.
Morzer
Speaking of exotic critters, I have found a rather intriguing Republican in John’s neck of the woods:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/19/bill-compulsory-science-fiction-west-virginia
Capt. Seaweed
@catdevotee:
You live in Central Oregon, don’t you.
B. Lehmann
Havoc and Tempest love to eat bugs. They chase squirrels but rats can run right by them and they pretend not to see them!
max
A nice daddy long legs in the guest bathroom, a very solid spider has made a web right over the sliding door in the back and it is loaded with nasty critters who would otherwise sully my household, and there was a nice spider right above my stove who is doing his work eating up the vile bugs who make it that far into the house.
I’m fine with spiders, and I dropped all but organic pesticides & fertilizers (except for certain very rare uses) more than twenty years ago.
However, about four or five days ago as I was finishing re-potting some onion chives I started last years, I was walking away from the pot, looked over and noticed a big black spider crawling out from the water trap on the pot. About 3/4″ long or so, big, fat, black… pregnant. Black widow.
So I pointed at it and said, ‘You die. I’ll be right back with the hammer.’ Went and got the hammer, came back, and it had disappeared. So I went and got the hornet jet spray (rarely used and about the only artificial pesticide I had) and sprayed it in the water trap. Flushed missy out, and wham wham wham. Problem solved.
I generally leave most everything alone if it isn’t bothering me, but copperheads, cottonmouths, coral snakes, black widows, hornets and yellow jackets under the eaves, scorpions inside the house, or tarantulas in the yards. Those gotta go. I don’t need the dog (or the cat for that matter) getting into a fight with a tarantula, but you can mostly herd those guys off. Poisonous beasties have to go, but that’s what they make axes and machetes for.
Plus, I haven’t killed anything other than a housefly or mosquito for decades, brake hard for possums, squirrels and other critters on the road, and even cup stink bugs and throw them out of the house rather than step on them.
Heh. I don’t worry about coyotes and bears or squirrels, but I do have this damn woodpeckers. The peak of the roof of this house is about 35 foot off the ground (no, I don’t have a 35-foot ladder), and the siding at the peak blew off, and I can’t get up there to fix it and the attic is difficult to get into. So the morning after every cold night, about 7:30 am, this woodpecker goes off, and I wake up wondering if the roof is going to fall in. I’m going to get into the attic and block off the hole, but if the bird hangs around inside someone, the bird gets it. Nothin’ personal against woodpeckers, although around here they do tend to keep at a spot until the limb falls from the tree. Somebody gonna die from that.
max
[‘Mellow, not a pacifist.’]
Kris Collins
I’m phobic about spiders because of an incident when I was a baby (spider nest burst on me, lots of. . . Can’t go on will have nightmares.) So I can’t have them in the house, but we get lovely brown spideys outside that build huge beautiful webs that catch tons of icky bugs and I can coexist with them as long as they don’t get too close to me. But bats! I looove bats! We had them living in a big maple tree in our back yard when I was a kid and I loved watching them swooping around at dusk. We never had any bugs and I think they’re cute too.
karen marie
I hate spiders because my former Cocker James got bit on the ankle by one and it caused a lot of pain for him and a lot of upset for me. I didn’t know he had been bitten but he kept biting his ankle over a couple days so I took him to the vet who did a needle aspiration of the swollen lump. The vet told me it was a very aggressive, fast growing cancer and I should have it cut out immediately, so I did. The following week we got the results of the biopsy back. It was not cancer, it was a spider bite.
For three weeks I had to carry that poor dog up and down the very steep, narrow stairs in the third-floor walkup I was living in, because the excision was so deep on his skinny little ankle.
If your doctor says it’s cancer, wait a week. It’s probably just a spider bite.
Mnemosyne
@karen marie:
If it’s any consolation, your vet was probably right to insist on cutting it out — spider bites can get necrosis, so you may simply have done the surgery sooner rather than later.
SG
Neither. We love spiders and bats in this household too.
I also love to see dragonflies and praying mantises, both voracious eaters. Mantises will eat any insect, including beneficials, but they’re so cool I’ll protect them at all times. I once rescued one trying unsuccessfully to climb a sleek steel office tower wall in the middle of NY. I managed to get it into a Manila envelope and set it loose on a tree in a nearby park. It was toward the end of the season, and it probably didn’t have much time left, but I didn’t want to see it crushed underfoot by some totally unseeing pedestrian.
Fort Geek
I once banned an acquaintance from my house for killing a spider. It had been hanging on a line from a tree branch and decided I was a good landing spot. Acquaintance freaked out like I was about to be shot, slapped the spider off me, and stomped it into oblivion.
This, after I’d specifically told him not to.
Too bad he wasn’t that way about roaches or houseflies.
Fort Geek
@Jennifer: A few years ago, I had one of those bastards wake me up by flying in my darkened room, hitting the wall right above my head, and landing on my face.
Uh-uh. Ain’t having that.
Apparently, killing that one wasn’t enough warning for its buddies, because a few days later another one did the same thing. Maybe that one’s demise got the word out. Hasn’t happened again.
Fred
Once I offhandedly said to a friend not to interfere with nature. He replied, “I am nature.”
I always liked bats but not crazy about spiders but I still let them live. The only critters I kill are bees in the house, (Katarina is allergic so screw’em) mosquitos and a variety of poisonous snake that occassionally likes to sun in my yard near the dogs (once again, screw’em). Killing critters gives me no joy but I’ve learned to be at peace with croaking any brainless thing that bites. Oh yeah, I detest ticks and have no mercy for them. Screw’em!
bago
Spiders are cool, especially when they reduce the population of tiny moths that stick themselves to your eardrum and in futility flutter whilst you figure out how to drown them in oil. Hell of a night.
Montarvillois
You’re a man after my own heart.
Hillary Rettig
> I still eat meat
If you do less eat that (and dairy, btw, which is in many ways worse), I think you will feel better both ethically (because veg is consistent with your stated principles) and physically.
Here’s a good short guide to eating more veg. The author offers a good strategy of not depriving yourself but using good foods to “crowd out” the bad ones. Just do it one meal at a time.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Vegan-Guide-Compassionate/dp/1461088011/
And here’s my article on Nonperfectionist Veganism, which may also be useful:
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2012/06/the-rise-of-nonperfectionist-veganism.html
qwerty42
@Jennifer: Yeah, I grew up in Savannah. We called them Palmetto Bugs too. But they’re huge f-ing roaches. That occasionally fly. The only good thing is that they seem to prefer being outside, so what you see inside is just a tiny fraction.
In other news, I understand that mysterious bat-killing disease has shown up here. Not good.
Hillary Rettig
>”If you do less eat that”
I’m WTFing myself now…
Robert Paehlke
If the spiders and bats are eating mosquitoes it is cooperative self-defense (admittedly with some collateral damage). So more hypocrite than lunatic.
Redshirt
Yeah. I’m exactly in the same mental/ethical place as you JC, but I don’t eat meat, for the very same reasons you listed. If you follow your own logic, you’ll find that based on your feelings towards the living creatures surrounding you, your ability to justify eating meat is a combination of laziness/abstractness.
You don’t see it, don’t see it raised to be killed, then butchered and brought to your store. There’s real suffering going on there, and if you don’t want to contribute to it, don’t.
I’ve been a vegetarian for these reasons approaching 20 years now and regret nothing.
Sayne
My place is also a no-kill apartment, with the one exception of Stink Bugs. They are a destructive, invasive species that are only in the US because of accidental import by humans. They attack crops and are a general nuisance. All of them in the US should be killed.
Neddie Jingo
Lovettsville, VA, reporting in here. Politically Northern Virginia, but culturally much more in the Harpers Ferry orbit. Clearing in a forest on the side of a mountain. Right now the birdsong is practically deafening, and a herd of deer, complete with newborn fawns, is grazing on the lawn. We got your snakes, your black widows, your brown recluses, but we’ve also got great horned owls, rough-legged hawks, foxes, even a black bear or two. It’s a lovely, lovely place, and I hope to die here in the fullness of time.
But let’s talk stinkbugs for a minute, shall we? John mentioned carefully cupping the occasional stinkbug and wafting it gently outdoors. I’m afraid a bitter laugh escaped my lips at that mention.
I’ve never been able to describe to outlanders just how soul-crushing these things are. I always sound like I’m exaggerating wildly. Trust me, I’m not.
From late October until just about now, these minions of an angry God make our lives an unutterable hell. Last night, cuddled in bed in a peaceful puddle of light reading, I was divebombed by a mere three of the miserable things, and that was how I knew their diabolical season is nearly over for this year. A month ago, it would have been twenty. Around New Year’s, forty or fifty or more.
On sunny winter days, they amass in any south-facing window, soaking in the dying rays of the weak sun. At those times, it’s easy to vacuum up 75-100 of the hellbeasts. But this gives us only a few minutes of surcease. They are replaced by the same number within the hour. Wonder Woman keeps a mason jar full of soapy water to drop them in; this kills them good and dead, but the jar fills up so fast that it must be flushed daily or it turns into a loathsome soup of Stinkbug Tea.
You shudder? We’re well beyond shuddering. We are nearly immune.
It’s not as if I don’t fight the bastards. Late October, the whole house exterior gets a Talstar treatment. This kills an awful lot of stinkbugs. They pile up an inch deep all around the outside walls. (If you bitch at me about Environmental Sensitivity, I will spit on the ground at your feet and invite you to spend 24 hours alone in my house in February. That’ll fix your do-gooder, white-gloved bourgeois sensibility toot-sweet. Besides, the bees and spiders don’t seem to mind. I can count two wasp-hives and hundreds of webs where I sit right now.)
But spraying the outdoors doesn’t kill the beasts that lurk in sock drawers, behind pictures, in cracks in the woodwork, under sofa cushions, breeding, breeding, breeding….
You may think yourselves safe in your own houses. Yeah, a stinkbug or two, just scoop ’em up and chuck ’em outside. Nice, clean conscience. But if you live east of the MIssissippi and north of the Gulf, they’re coming. Oh, yes, they’re coming. Try to conceive of this: these goddamned invasive Chinese things have no natural predators. No bats, no birds, no spiders, no Magic Bullet is going to stop them.
That nauseating dull buzzing they make as they blunder about, crashing into things? It’s coming from inside the house…
Hunter
Yeah, me too. Except for cockroaches. Cockroaches are the only thing in the “kill on sight” category.
Exception — for a couple of years I would have sudden infestations of houseflies. Hundreds. Flypaper turned out to be the best (read “only”) way to deal with them, until I discovered how they were getting in — then a couple of drops of citronella oil (not candles, oil) in front of the hole in the wall, and no further problems.
I once shared my shower with a spider for a couple of months, until it either starved to death or moved on.
Jay C
@Ash Can: @MoeLarryAndJesus:
Bats are normally pretty useful critters – as long as they stay outside – we used to have them as a staple of the ecosystem at our summer place in Western MA (I used to have to hang mothballs in our (furled) pool umbrellas to keep the little guys from hanging out in them in the daytime. Past tense, though, ‘cuz they have become quite scarce in recent years: white-nose disease seems to have become common hereabouts, and I don’t think they have rebounded.
However, they don’t get house space with us: bats can carry rabies, so the occasional one that gets in gets the hook ASAP. I use one of the nets from the swimming pool: our LR has a 19’ peak: fun times (and some colorful language) when I have to try to net the sucker….
Sterling
@Fort Geek: I’m sympathetic to your friend, because when I see a spider I have a very deep, compulsive urge to kill it. If one lands on my arm or neck, I jump a mile and slam my hand at it without even thinking about it. It’s not something that’s easy to control.
Laura C
@Jay C:
Yup, rabies is no joke. Neither are rabies shots.
eemom
@Neddie Jingo:
UGH. I feelz ya. We don’t have it quite that bad here in Vienna, but yours is a shudderingly perfect essay, capturing every disgusting detail of those loathsome creatures’ existence.
Yes, the godawful buzzing noise……the way they CLUSTER……omg, I hate, hate HATE them.
maya
Fun with bats: Toss small rocks into the air near where you see bats flying around. They will dive towards them.
Years ago I kept a black widow spider, named Charlotte (of course), in a big gallon jar terrarium. I fed it flies etc., and had it for several months. Then it started spinning a cocoon. Since it hadn’t mated with any other black widower spider whilst I had her I thought it was just the natural instinct of a barren female exhibited. Shortly after she finished the cocoon she died. I just left the terrarium sitting on a night stand and forgot about it. Then one night while a candle was burning nearby I saw a shimmering line of tiny little translucent baby spiders climbing out of the terrarium through the vent holes in the cap. There were hundreds of them and they were everywhere. Spring cleaning came early that year.
Apparently a black widow’s gestation period is really long or they are asexual. Something I didn’t know.
Neddie Jingo
@eemom:
Well, I thank you for your kind words. But four or five paragraphs doesn’t even start. There’s a book-length screed boiling inside me, but I dont think any sane reader would want to read anything that gross for that long. But I’ll think about you the next time I have to put a splatter-screen over the top of whatever I’m cooking so they don’t wind up in my casserole or WTF ever. (That’s Chapter 19.)
@maya:
May I just express the simple, homespun country sentiment: GAAAAAAAAA!!!!! Or, as we say here in the backwoods: GAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
Jeffery Bahr
Good for you, John. We’ve been murderous animals for most of human history, time to change that.
Denali
I would say hypocritical lunatic, if pushed. But other then that, you’re a pretty okay guy.
dance around in your bones
This household is a ‘capture them gently, then put them outside WHERE THEY LIVE!’ kinda place. Nonetheless, the grandkids always freaked at the sight of a spider.
Yesterday, oddly enough, we were reading a book about spiders when one of them spotted a tiny little house spider on the wall. I captured it by scooping it up with a magazine subscription card, and then let it run around on my hand. The kids were thrilled and then they all wanted to do it. They said it tickled and I like to think I helped them lose a bit of their fear about spiders.
We went back to the spider book to identify the few spiders that are dangerous to humans.
That said, I fucking HATE cockroaches – in New Mexico we used to have these huge ones that scurried around on the sidewalks at night (bummer for barefoot walking hippie kid) and I always had to turn on a light and wait for them to scurry to the corners before I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I also hated squashing them because they crunched. Yuck.
LeeM
What a kind soul. Our house is also a spider sanctuary. My daughter accepts them, my son freaks out at the one in the bathroom.
I love the springtime. The Golden Orb Weavers come out in the side yard. Last year we had about a dozen palm sized females and a slew of the smaller males. I do have to check the webs morning and night for hummingbirds (2 caught and released last year).
Lawrence
Imagine you walk into the back room of a pawn shop looking for the owner. You observe Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney, and Rick Santorum hogtied and ball gagged. To quote Catwoman: The no killing thing, I’m not as committed to it as you are.
Trakker
UGH! I hate spiders, always have. Used to kill them on sight inside and outside, but now only in the house so I’m getting better.
McJulie
@dance around in your bones:
Sorry to burst your bubble, but most spiders you find indoors are, in fact, house spiders. Inside is where they live. They might make a nice home in your garage or porch or something kinda semi-indoorsy, but actual outside? Not their habitat, and they probably won’t live long there.
dance around in your bones
@McJulie: Well, we told the kids that mostly to make them feel better. Better than just squashing them.
From now on I guess we’ll relocate to the garage! Although now, since we did the run around on your arm experiment, they’ve all been clamoring for more spiders to run around on their arms – caught another one today, and they all wanted the runaround.
P.S. You didn’t burst my bubble.