Roaches of both the American (the big ones) and German (smaller, lighter brown) ones. And it is totally disgusting that I know the difference.
Incidentally cats don’t like them either for food (all of mine have caught and killed one, ate it and then puked). They do like them as toys. One night I woke up in the middle of the night as a cat was running all over me in my bed, jumping to the floor and jumping back up. It was like WTF?
Anyway she had caught an American cockroach and she’d hold it carefully in her mouth. Drop it on my bed batting at it until it fell to the floor. She’d jump down, carefully pick it up in her mouth and drop it on my bed again Rinse and repeat. So I grabbed it, opened the window and threw it out. That cat was not happy with me. Not one iota.
Little tiny sugar ants were produced by the devil. Almost impossible to get rid of, if you get them. I call them sugar ants. I’m not sure what the real name is.
@cfg83@phendrick The posters and captions in these images are what unnerve me, because they’re much more sophisticated than I’d expect. Although those are some exceptionally large insects so I don’t know how undetectable they’ll be.
@cfg83@Kyeh “they’re much more sophisticated than I’d expect”
Not only more sophisticated, but funnier than you’d think they’d be from simple cut & paste. Hope the AI overlords still have a sense of humor when they send their drones and droids to round us up for the stalags.
@f00l@mediocrebot can anyone make out that Latin inscription, which is blurry to me?
If it’s “Dicut insecta sanctum”, then that’s something like “The insects say it’s holy”. A pretty good motto for that version of the CIA.
@famwelch@macromeh@phendrick Which ones are the party flies? I’m guessing it’s the fruit flies, because they like to congregate on fermenting fruit and get buzzed.
@famwelch@macromeh@rockblossom Sounds like college students around sangria.
/showme college students and fruit flies congregating around open bottles and punch bowls of sangria
@ebatch
to me that’s kind of like cilantro. Some people can’t stand the stuff cuz they say it tastes like soap, personally I love it. Stink bugs, while they most definitely have a distinct odor, remind me more of cloves than something disagreeable. That being said I’d just as soon they weren’t spewing out whatever inside my house.
Fruit Flies cuz once you think the half million you swore were in the kitchen seem to have disappeared, 'bout 50, 000 were just hiding from plain sight…
We have boxelder bugs. They don’t bite or carry worrying diseases, and they generally stay outside of our home. So they are not the most annoying to deal with, and for that reason we don’t. We coexist.
Occasionally a new person will come during the times the swarms are sunning on the porch and see what is clearly an unsettling amount of bugs, and we are like “oh yea, don’t worry about them.”
@KNmeh7 we have the box elder bugs, aside from quantity and a love for our sin facing windows I don’t mind them as much, since I have to deal with stink bugs.
I do have to laugh as I’ve also tuned them out as a unavoidable fact of life.
Pantry moths… Nothing worse than opening up a container of oatmeal, grits, etc, that has a bunch of webs in it… yuck!
Edit: panty moths are a whole different issue…
@chienfou Yeah, clothes moths are worse. I don’t buy any wool clothing anymore, but there’s a rug that used to be beautiful in my late husband’s study that’s now just crumbling away. There’s a lot of heavy furniture on it and the damage was extensive before I realized it, so I haven’t moved it out.
@Kyeh
That’s NO problem for me because… I don’t do wool. No philosophical or vegan issues, just makes me itch and is WAY too hot.
I know my wife has had an issue with a coat she got from her mom years ago. But wool is one of those things I just can’t wear.
Lady bugs. Stink bugs. Both invade about the same time each year by the hundreds. And they land on my wife in her sleep and then she gets mad at me because I have not vacuumed them out of the house before we go to bed. Go figure!
Two of them: centipedes and velvet ants.
Centipedes sting, and when caught by a spider, they fill the house with an odor that smells like an electrical short.
But the velvet ant, which is a wasp, is worse. The females are wingless and look a lot like carpenter ants. For something so tiny, they have a painful sting.
@chienfou I see the red and black ones on outside plants, but I’ve never seen one inside. At least they are easier to see and avoid. The smaller reddish-brown ones (I’m told) don’t hurt as much, but they are hard to spot and fast-moving.
@cfg83@chienfou@rockblossom OBTW, not mentioned above, the velvet ants can be over an inch long. You’d think they were Australian. And I’m told that if you do something stupid and get stung by one, you will swear that they must be Australian, and will most likely need your entire collection of invective to do so.
@cfg83@rockblossom@werehatrack
As mentioned above the Velvet ant is technically not an ant but is actually a wingless wasp. That’s why the sting is so bad… and why they are called ‘cow killer’ locally. I’ll occasionally find one running around on the pavers by the pool. Definitely not something you want to step on barefoot! Thankfully I don’t run into them often.
Every once in a blue moon flies find a way into my home by the dozen. The first time it happened the air quality outside was hell from some fires in Canada. It was a real shock and I was kept very busy swatting them! I got a real workout on those days!
Google/Alexa bugs and their ilk. Any “connected” device with a microphone may now be a risk for data harvesting to drive marketing. FTS. If I have a choice, I’m buying stuff that doesn’t talk to any mother ship. (Cell phones, alas, are hard to do without. I may devise a Faraday holster for mine, though.)
Yeah where do we find these “non-spying” consumer items.
I use a bit of android (cause filesystem control) and a bit of iOS. Cause the interface is good and maybe more privacy.
And I bought a Chromebook cause sometimes I need a keyboard. Not often tho.
I rarely use it and may try Linux in it. It’s an acer so that ought to work if I’m not too clueless.
The thing about ChromeOS is … does it listen even when I’m logged out and the lid is shut and I think the Chromebook is off but maybe it’s not? Who knows?
Since I live alone and normally use headphones for media there’s not a lot to listen to.
I have the “listening” turned off as well as i can manage on the handsets.
No “hey google” no Siri no wake words per se. i think. Maybe. Perhaps.
Ha ha ha I bet I’m wrong.
I do use the Android and IOS on screen keyboard abilities to transcribe speech. To respond to text messages at a red light and similar.
But that is a manual thing to turn in and off.
That turning off works, right? Right?
Huh.
And of course, these devices aren’t listening all the time anyway because of course the corporate Giants would never do that to us would they?
Ha ha ha
I did manage to purge the environment of smart devices and Alexa and all that
I’m sure I have all the lack or privacy I have purchased. And more.
If you live in soybean country, it’s hands down the lady beetles that were introduced to eat soybean aphids. They will find ways to get in your house, they stink, they poop on everything, and they bite! I have vacuumed up tens of thousands of them and it never stops until it is very cold out. They are, IMO, the worst.
@guyfromhawthorn
Also the bane of our existence here in the south.
Any wood in contact with dirt for more than a few days as liable to become a snack for termites.
Should have read the question more carefully before I clicked on my answer… if you have mosquitoes or even gnats in your home, you have bigger problem… OR you need new screens. You never know. I would like to change my answer to ANTS as well, teacher!
Apparently, window screens are one of the most admired new world innovations, according fórum responses by visitors to the Americas from Eu/Asia/Oceana.
I don’t quite get the absence of window screens in the old world.
Window screens ain’t that hard. Been around forever. Kinda cheap. Really nice for homes -and other buildings that don’t have sealed climate control.
Why don’t they just install them?
@f00l Different window styles, for one. Windows that swing out, or tilt for air circulation. Even European windows that swing inward/tilt inward often have shutters or outside stuff (window boxes) that would interfere with a screen. Same in many Eastern countries. I know that Amazon/UK sells do-it-yourself window screen kits, but they are hard to fit properly and aren’t very durable.
If all those swing-out and tilt and shuttered and other old world window styles were also commonly installed in houses in the US, companies would have workable window screen add-on solutions for sale at AMZ and at every hardware or window treatment store.
IMHO
Oh well.
I do get the absence of screens in houses and buildings marked as legally historically protected or whatever.
But it sounds like a pain to live that way.
I guess they mind about indoor bugs a little less than we do.
@f00l Actually, six years living in Europe, no screens, I never had a bug problem. Occasionally got a bird or a lizard, but rarely any flying insects. I get as many critters inside now (with screens) as I did then. Perhaps the builders in the USA developed windows with screens because we really need them here. A lot of the visitors to the USA might like them at home, but they don’t really need them enough to spend the money to install them.
@f00l I’m sure there were mosquitoes and some other flying insects that got in. In a couple of places I lived, a bedroom window or balcony door had a mosquito net. They were a light mesh that could fold or slide, not a permanent window cover. That was decades ago, so I’m not sure what they are using now.
German cockroaches, hands down. They try to get into every little crevice and concealed space. I am cautiously hoping that I have defeated the latest incursion of them. I had to dismantle two countertop appliances to get what may have been the last of the nests. When I moved into this house 35 years ago, I caulked all of the seams in the kitchen cabinets in order to reduce the likelihood of an infestation of those little bastards. It seems to have helped.
Walked out to check the chemicals in the pool and as I approached my deck box I saw a “swarm” of these guys flying around.
My first thought was ‘oh s*** I have a bunch of bees trying to make a nest under my pool house’. I hadn’t seen this particular insect around before … at least not that I’ve noticed.
On further research these turn out to probably be giant resin bees which are a harmless bee & great pollinators and competitors for Carpenter bee holes (without actually making their own). For the time being they’re getting a pass.
Roaches of both the American (the big ones) and German (smaller, lighter brown) ones. And it is totally disgusting that I know the difference.
Incidentally cats don’t like them either for food (all of mine have caught and killed one, ate it and then puked). They do like them as toys. One night I woke up in the middle of the night as a cat was running all over me in my bed, jumping to the floor and jumping back up. It was like WTF?
Anyway she had caught an American cockroach and she’d hold it carefully in her mouth. Drop it on my bed batting at it until it fell to the floor. She’d jump down, carefully pick it up in her mouth and drop it on my bed again Rinse and repeat. So I grabbed it, opened the window and threw it out. That cat was not happy with me. Not one iota.
Litter bugs!
Cave crickets are evil, they must be stopped.
Flies!! Grrrrrr…
@gjrupert Yep.
@gjrupert I dislike flies, too. But I’ve never heard one growl like that…
Having a june bug flying into a window repeatedly is pretty annoying.
Little tiny sugar ants were produced by the devil. Almost impossible to get rid of, if you get them. I call them sugar ants. I’m not sure what the real name is.
Fleas are harder to get rid of than the other bugs listed. You can kill all but one of them, and you will still be infested.
OTOH, CIA bugs can be pretty annoying also.
/showme a Man in Black hiding a microphone in a ceiling fan while scratching at numerous fleas while a dog looks on amusedly
@phendrick ???
/showme a Man in Black hiding a microphone in a ceiling fan while scratching at numerous fleas while a dog looks on amusedly
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “a Man in Black hiding a microphone in a ceiling fan while scratching at numerous fleas while a do…”
@phendrick Wow. I didn’t “get” CIA bugs until I saw the picture just now. Oops.
/showme CIA officer is training patriotic insects into carrying miniaturized electronic surveillance equipment into homes of suspected bad guys.
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “CIA officer is training patriotic insects into carrying miniaturized electronic surveillance equi…”
@cfg83 @phendrick The posters and captions in these images are what unnerve me, because they’re much more sophisticated than I’d expect. Although those are some exceptionally large insects so I don’t know how undetectable they’ll be.
@Kyeh @phendrick That is a mini CIA officer that was chosen for this mission.
@cfg83 @phendrick Oh, okay.
@cfg83 @Kyeh “mini CIA officer” Then that house in the picture must be micro.
@cfg83 @Kyeh @phendrick
/showme CIA bugs listening to household bugs
@f00l Here’s the image you requested for “CIA bugs listening to household bugs”
@cfg83 @Kyeh “they’re much more sophisticated than I’d expect”
Not only more sophisticated, but funnier than you’d think they’d be from simple cut & paste. Hope the AI overlords still have a sense of humor when they send their drones and droids to round us up for the stalags.
@f00l @mediocrebot can anyone make out that Latin inscription, which is blurry to me?
If it’s “Dicut insecta sanctum”, then that’s something like “The insects say it’s holy”. A pretty good motto for that version of the CIA.
I vote for flies also
@famwelch I did too. We had primary runoffs,Tuesday.
@famwelch @phendrick
If you keep voting strictly along party lines, nothing will ever change…
@famwelch @macromeh @phendrick Which ones are the party flies? I’m guessing it’s the fruit flies, because they like to congregate on fermenting fruit and get buzzed.
@famwelch @macromeh @rockblossom Sounds like college students around sangria.
/showme college students and fruit flies congregating around open bottles and punch bowls of sangria
@phendrick Here’s the image you requested for “college students and fruit flies congregating around open bottles and punch bowls of sangria”
Wasps or hornets
Clothing moths
Stinkbugs
@ebatch
to me that’s kind of like cilantro. Some people can’t stand the stuff cuz they say it tastes like soap, personally I love it. Stink bugs, while they most definitely have a distinct odor, remind me more of cloves than something disagreeable. That being said I’d just as soon they weren’t spewing out whatever inside my house.
Fruit Flies cuz once you think the half million you swore were in the kitchen seem to have disappeared, 'bout 50, 000 were just hiding from plain sight…
@Lisa102503 TIL, gnats and fruit flies are distinct species.
I do appreciate that “aside from bed bugs” was specified. Those things are truly hellspawn.
We have boxelder bugs. They don’t bite or carry worrying diseases, and they generally stay outside of our home. So they are not the most annoying to deal with, and for that reason we don’t. We coexist.
Occasionally a new person will come during the times the swarms are sunning on the porch and see what is clearly an unsettling amount of bugs, and we are like “oh yea, don’t worry about them.”
@KNmeh7 we have the box elder bugs, aside from quantity and a love for our sin facing windows I don’t mind them as much, since I have to deal with stink bugs.
I do have to laugh as I’ve also tuned them out as a unavoidable fact of life.
@Aetherwizard @KNmeh7
After being happily married for almost 50 years that could be any window in our house!!
Pantry moths… Nothing worse than opening up a container of oatmeal, grits, etc, that has a bunch of webs in it… yuck!
Edit: panty moths are a whole different issue…
@chienfou Yeah, clothes moths are worse. I don’t buy any wool clothing anymore, but there’s a rug that used to be beautiful in my late husband’s study that’s now just crumbling away. There’s a lot of heavy furniture on it and the damage was extensive before I realized it, so I haven’t moved it out.
@Kyeh
That’s NO problem for me because… I don’t do wool. No philosophical or vegan issues, just makes me itch and is WAY too hot.
I know my wife has had an issue with a coat she got from her mom years ago. But wool is one of those things I just can’t wear.
@chienfou I see. Of course, where you live you don’t much need wool things anyway!
@Kyeh
I barely need sheets
@chienfou @Kyeh To quote somebody on here, ISWYDT.
Lady bugs. Stink bugs. Both invade about the same time each year by the hundreds. And they land on my wife in her sleep and then she gets mad at me because I have not vacuumed them out of the house before we go to bed. Go figure!
@rustyh3
Asian lady beetles are the primary culprit.
Two of them: centipedes and velvet ants.
Centipedes sting, and when caught by a spider, they fill the house with an odor that smells like an electrical short.
But the velvet ant, which is a wasp, is worse. The females are wingless and look a lot like carpenter ants. For something so tiny, they have a painful sting.
@rockblossom
Locally velvet ants are called “cow killers”. Yes, they hurt that bad!
@chienfou I see the red and black ones on outside plants, but I’ve never seen one inside. At least they are easier to see and avoid. The smaller reddish-brown ones (I’m told) don’t hurt as much, but they are hard to spot and fast-moving.
@chienfou @rockblossom WOW! I remember the 1/2" ants in Houston in the early 1970’s, but a velvet ant is a completely different beastie.
@cfg83 @chienfou @rockblossom I’ve seen velvet ants here in Houston a few times. I’ve found a couple in my yard.
@cfg83 @chienfou @rockblossom OBTW, not mentioned above, the velvet ants can be over an inch long. You’d think they were Australian. And I’m told that if you do something stupid and get stung by one, you will swear that they must be Australian, and will most likely need your entire collection of invective to do so.
@chienfou @rockblossom @werehatrack Ha ha! I remember black ants being up to an inch, but never in swarms.
/showme Velvet ant dressed like Drocodile Dundee.
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “Velvet ant dressed like Drocodile Dundee.”
@cfg83 @rockblossom @werehatrack
As mentioned above the Velvet ant is technically not an ant but is actually a wingless wasp. That’s why the sting is so bad… and why they are called ‘cow killer’ locally. I’ll occasionally find one running around on the pavers by the pool. Definitely not something you want to step on barefoot! Thankfully I don’t run into them often.
@cfg83 @chienfou @rockblossom @werehatrack Looks like the bot ignored your typo.
Does that bode ill?
@phendrick
I’m going to assume that was addressed to cfg83…
@chienfou @phendrick Me too! Drocodile??? I thought I copy/pasted that, but I guess not. Mediocrebot don’t care …
/showme Band named Velvet Ant Underground where the musicians are Velvet Ants.
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “Band named Velvet Ant Underground where the musicians are Velvet Ants.”
Every once in a blue moon flies find a way into my home by the dozen. The first time it happened the air quality outside was hell from some fires in Canada. It was a real shock and I was kept very busy swatting them! I got a real workout on those days!
Google/Alexa bugs and their ilk. Any “connected” device with a microphone may now be a risk for data harvesting to drive marketing. FTS. If I have a choice, I’m buying stuff that doesn’t talk to any mother ship. (Cell phones, alas, are hard to do without. I may devise a Faraday holster for mine, though.)
@werehatrack
@werehatrack
Yeah where do we find these “non-spying” consumer items.
I use a bit of android (cause filesystem control) and a bit of iOS. Cause the interface is good and maybe more privacy.
And I bought a Chromebook cause sometimes I need a keyboard. Not often tho.
I rarely use it and may try Linux in it. It’s an acer so that ought to work if I’m not too clueless.
The thing about ChromeOS is … does it listen even when I’m logged out and the lid is shut and I think the Chromebook is off but maybe it’s not? Who knows?
Since I live alone and normally use headphones for media there’s not a lot to listen to.
I have the “listening” turned off as well as i can manage on the handsets.
No “hey google” no Siri no wake words per se.
i think. Maybe. Perhaps.
Ha ha ha I bet I’m wrong.
I do use the Android and IOS on screen keyboard abilities to transcribe speech. To respond to text messages at a red light and similar.
But that is a manual thing to turn in and off.
That turning off works, right? Right?
Huh.
And of course, these devices aren’t listening all the time anyway because of course the corporate Giants would never do that to us would they?
Ha ha ha
I did manage to purge the environment of smart devices and Alexa and all that
I’m sure I have all the lack or privacy I have purchased. And more.
I wonder if even Elon can afford device privacy.
Oh well
/showme “all devices listen all the time”
@f00l Here’s the image you requested for ““all devices listen all the time””
Inside the home… and no one said roaches? I’ll say it
oops, i didn’t click the first 10 comments; so it’s been said
If you live in soybean country, it’s hands down the lady beetles that were introduced to eat soybean aphids. They will find ways to get in your house, they stink, they poop on everything, and they bite! I have vacuumed up tens of thousands of them and it never stops until it is very cold out. They are, IMO, the worst.
Stink bugs.
Carpenter bees would be my pick, living in a log home, but they stay outside the living spaces.
Thankfully we don’t get much for them up here, but I hear from those California that termites are horrendous
@guyfromhawthorn
Also the bane of our existence here in the south.
Any wood in contact with dirt for more than a few days as liable to become a snack for termites.
Should have read the question more carefully before I clicked on my answer… if you have mosquitoes or even gnats in your home, you have bigger problem… OR you need new screens. You never know. I would like to change my answer to ANTS as well, teacher!
@mcemanuel
Apparently, window screens are one of the most admired new world innovations, according fórum responses by visitors to the Americas from Eu/Asia/Oceana.
I don’t quite get the absence of window screens in the old world.
Window screens ain’t that hard. Been around forever. Kinda cheap. Really nice for homes -and other buildings that don’t have sealed climate control.
Why don’t they just install them?
/showme the most elaborate window screen
@f00l Here’s the image you requested for “the most elaborate window screen”
@f00l Different window styles, for one. Windows that swing out, or tilt for air circulation. Even European windows that swing inward/tilt inward often have shutters or outside stuff (window boxes) that would interfere with a screen. Same in many Eastern countries. I know that Amazon/UK sells do-it-yourself window screen kits, but they are hard to fit properly and aren’t very durable.
@rockblossom
If all those swing-out and tilt and shuttered and other old world window styles were also commonly installed in houses in the US, companies would have workable window screen add-on solutions for sale at AMZ and at every hardware or window treatment store.
IMHO
Oh well.
I do get the absence of screens in houses and buildings marked as legally historically protected or whatever.
But it sounds like a pain to live that way.
I guess they mind about indoor bugs a little less than we do.
@f00l Actually, six years living in Europe, no screens, I never had a bug problem. Occasionally got a bird or a lizard, but rarely any flying insects. I get as many critters inside now (with screens) as I did then. Perhaps the builders in the USA developed windows with screens because we really need them here. A lot of the visitors to the USA might like them at home, but they don’t really need them enough to spend the money to install them.
@rockblossom
so no mosquitos where you were in the EU?
@f00l I’m sure there were mosquitoes and some other flying insects that got in. In a couple of places I lived, a bedroom window or balcony door had a mosquito net. They were a light mesh that could fold or slide, not a permanent window cover. That was decades ago, so I’m not sure what they are using now.
German cockroaches, hands down. They try to get into every little crevice and concealed space. I am cautiously hoping that I have defeated the latest incursion of them. I had to dismantle two countertop appliances to get what may have been the last of the nests. When I moved into this house 35 years ago, I caulked all of the seams in the kitchen cabinets in order to reduce the likelihood of an infestation of those little bastards. It seems to have helped.
Walked out to check the chemicals in the pool and as I approached my deck box I saw a “swarm” of these guys flying around.
My first thought was ‘oh s*** I have a bunch of bees trying to make a nest under my pool house’. I hadn’t seen this particular insect around before … at least not that I’ve noticed.
On further research these turn out to probably be giant resin bees which are a harmless bee & great pollinators and competitors for Carpenter bee holes (without actually making their own). For the time being they’re getting a pass.
@chienfou Wow! How giant are they? (Not as big as the photos suggest, I hope!)
@Kyeh
about .75 to 1 inch. The hole is a little bigger than a pencil…
@chienfou Well, that would be great if they drive away the carpenter bees.
@Kyeh
My thoughts exactly