CIMG0620.JPG originally uploaded by Simon Welsh
Last week’s poll asked whether you used your horn to alert other drivers to your presence or displeasure. The results were split almost straight down the middle between “Yes” and “Rarely” and I have to admit I was a bit surprised there weren’t more “Rarely” or “No” votes being that this is Minnesota after all. Just so you know, a few hours before posting this, The Wife used her horn to share her presence and displeasure at a moron in our neighborhood who thought he was going to just roll right out in front of us without stopping at an intersection. Fun times.
This week’s poll comes after speaking with a reader who noted there was a bat in their home this weekend. This is not the first time it has happened either. The first time they were sleeping in bed and awoke to find it sharing the bed with them. While they attempted to get the rabies shots, the clinic refused and said the MDH told them it was highly unlikely they were bitten. This is directly counter to what I have heard from others about bats in the home,
Anyway this week’s poll is about any sort of critter in your home and what you had to do to get rid of them. The only ones I’ve ever dealt with in Minnesota are ants and they generally only show up in the spring during the heavy rains. However, when living in PA my father found a family of mice living in the foundation. He cut a hole in to the cinderblocks and pulled out garbage bags full of their nest and then went above and beyond to ensure they were dead and out.
What about you? What home invading pests have you had to deal with? Have you ever had a bat in your home and did you have to get the shots? What about other less dangerous pests like mice, squirrels, and raccoons? Do you normally eradicate them yourself or do you hire someone to do it for you? Do you prefer more humane trappings or the old fashioned kind (deadly devices and/or chemicals)? Whatever you have to say about this one vote on the sidebar and then comment on below. After you do both of those things feel free to check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.
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March 11th, 2012 at 10:21 am
Any reader ever heard of the ‘Confused Flour Beetle’? About ten years ago my wife started finding tiny bugs crawling across the kitchen countertops. I captured one and put it in a baggie and took it to work where I had an old but quality microscope. I got a very detailed look at the critter and then scoured the internet and quickly found it. A female can lay hundreds of eggs per batch and the eggs hatch at various times, up to a year later. These beetles are tiny, from a half mm to maybe 2-3 mm in length for an adult. (.020” to .080-.120″) They are black and they can fly and are very hardy. You have to actually crush them to kill them. I found out that they can be in any box of cereal or a loaf of bread or a cake mix, anything with flour in it. It is a huge problem in processing foods because a human eye can’t see the eggs. Once they are in your home they lay their eggs in the seams and joints of cupboards or in a little or seldom used box or bag of flour or corn meal or cereal. They can easily chew through a heavy freezer bag or a dry dog food bag. You can empty every cupboard, vacuum every seam and corner, wipe everything with bleach or vinegar and though you think you got them all, within a week they start appearing. The bug experts compare them to leprosy, once you get them, they are there to stay. We still kill them daily after ten years.
March 11th, 2012 at 10:33 am
chipmunks, or striped gopher’s i don’t know which is which. i get them around my foundation and rock walls. i trap ‘em (VICTOR) and send them to that great oak tree in the sky.
i get mice in the basement during the fall when the temps drop. victor gets them also along with decon.
voles are in the rock walls also and usually victor gets them too.
bb
March 11th, 2012 at 11:25 am
First off, I you wake up to a bat in your bed, you absolutely should insist on getting rabies shots. I wouldn’t ever go to that clinic again.
I have had a situation where I found a bat in the room where I was sleeping (up north). It was never caught, so I got the shots. Why take a chance?
As for “everyday” stuff, we occasionally get mice in the house. I’ve tried to figure out where they come in, but so far, no luck. I just put out the traps and kill them, and that’s that. Interestingly, they don’t bother with our food — they just focus on the kitchen garbage under the sink.
The last time I bought a couple of those Black & Decker devices that you plug in and they emit some kind of inaudible-to-humans noise that mice and such don’t like. We haven’t had any mice at all this winter, but unless we go 2 years without a mouse, I won’t fully believe it’s doing anything.
March 11th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
I’ve never had worse than ants in my current place, which I typically deal with using ant traps and Raid (though I am very careful with both due to having pets). Though I’ve seen my dog sniffing at the foundation outside, so it’s possible there has been some mouse, vole, or chipmunk activity there as well.
And yeah, I’d get shots if I was bitten by a bat, among other animals.
March 11th, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Bats- 2 (once with rabies shots)
Mice- every spring and fall
Ants- twice
That’s at my current house.
But growing up, I had the worst animal ever in my house, snakes! And not just one, but four before we figured out how they were getting in, and all in my bedroom. They were crawling through my bedroom walls. Then on to my bed. Then on to the ground.
I was very phobic of snakes before this, and we had lots and lots around the house, but this was the end. I was a nervous wreck for weeks. It took years before I could even walk in the woods. I wouldn’t watch any movie that I knew had snakes in it. I’m quite a bit better now, but I still do everything I can to avoid the fuckers.
March 11th, 2012 at 5:53 pm
Wow, Kassie, I think you win this thread. I don’t mind snakes, but I think having them in my bedroom would make me phobic too.
March 11th, 2012 at 7:38 pm
We had a great bat filled weekend at the cabin a few summers back. I captures 5 over two nights with my hands. I was wearing leather gloves to avoid being bitten. They have very small teeth.
Mice are always fun. They were infecting our home when we moved in. The previous owners were slobs and left food out. I found several new and old mice nests in the walls. We plugged the hole and put all food in containers which a mouse could chew through. So far only one mouse in the traps this winter.
March 11th, 2012 at 10:37 pm
I grew up in the country, and never had the issues with wildlife that I do in my current city home. In the four years since we moved in, we’ve dealt with 3 bats, 6 squirrels, 4 mice, 1 bird, and 1 shrew. Oddly enough, I think the shrew made me scream the loudest. The element of surprise I suppose, because I’m most scared of the bats.
We mostly trap them and set them free far, far way.
March 12th, 2012 at 6:48 am
Well all of these tales of animal encroachment make my skin crawl. What are the side effects of getting rabies shots? I had no clue that it was SOP to get them just because a bat was in your room. Are their bites that undetectable that you wouldn’t notice them?
BTW raccoons are not “less dangerous” than a bat. In fact, the majority of rabies carriers are raccoons and if I’m not mistaken, the majority of actual human rabies cases are caused by them.
March 12th, 2012 at 7:16 am
N52,
My point was that you’ll know when a raccoon bites you.
March 12th, 2012 at 8:28 am
re: rabies shots. Ex-husband and I woke up with a bat in the bedroom. We were going to ignore the whole thing until a friend at the Dept of Health threatened to report us, so we went and got our shots. Basically, the teeth of bats are so small, you would never know if you were bitten in your sleep. Very unlikely we were, but you know that 100% chance of death thing is something public health officials take seriously.
Shots are required at days 0, 3, 7, 14, and 28 I recall. Day 0 was really tough since it was both the vaccine and the anti-dote. They through in a tetanus for good measure. I think it was two shots in each leg, two shots in each butt cheek and one shot in each arm. Or something like that. It was A LOT of shots. And the shots were all like tetanus where they made your muscles ache. Both my ex-husband and I got sick, both vomiting and diarrhea. We both had fevers. It was horrible. The rest of them were only one or two shots each time, if I remember correctly. I ran a slight fever each time, but my ex got sick each time.
And I got deferred from giving blood for an entire year. It just sucked.
March 12th, 2012 at 8:52 am
Which story to tell. The one about the dead mouse in my silverware drawer or the raccoon that tried to jump me one?
I keep my dog’s food in plastic bins in my garage, next to the door that enters the house. Once in awhile, if the bins are not secured properly, I will open them up to find a mouse or two in there nibbling away. I usually give them a pass and let them go and try to make sure those bins are secured every time we feed the dog.
A few months ago, I opened up the door to the garage to see a rather large raccoon sitting on one bin, eating from the second one. In an instant, the bastard decided to charge me, jumping off the bin (that was maybe 4 feet from me) and flying towards me. Somehow I was able to shut the door fast enough to hear his body smack the door as I was shutting it on him.
I literally did the thing where I placed my back and my palms of my hands against the door and uttered a little scream worthy of Janet Leigh, much to the large amusement of my older daughter who did not know my side of the story at that point. I am pretty sure she still does not believe that I almost died that day.
March 12th, 2012 at 9:58 am
The SOP can be found on the health department Web sites. They are not necessary just because a bat was in your room. They are recommended if you have been sleeping in a room where you find a bat (especially if it is in your bed, which is highly unusual for a healthy bat). The recommendation is, indeed, because you cannot tell if you have been bitten. They leave no mark.
Best case is catching the bat and having it tested. Then you know for sure.
Anyway, unlike Kassie, both my son and I had the rabies series with zero side-effects. It wasn’t any different than a flu shot for us – if you press on the area, it feels a little like a bruise for 24 hours. My son was 5 or 6 at the time and it didn’t bother him one bit.
The initial visit is based on your weight. My son had maybe 2 or 3 shots and I had 5 or 6 if I remember right.
The biggest “pains” are the inconvenience and the cost. You do have to get them on the schedule outlined. My “day 28″ happened to be during a vacation to Colorado, so I had to find a clinic in Denver area where they had the right vaccine and could administer it. I also had a Sunday in there so I had to get mine in the ER once since it was the only place open where they could receive the vaccine from my clinic.
If I recall, the series also costs about $1,000. A little rough depending on your insurance situation.
Anyway, all in all, it was well worth it. I suffer from anxiety when it comes to medical issues, and I wouldn’t sleep at night “not knowing”. It just made sense.
March 12th, 2012 at 11:57 am
The usual problem around is the mouse. Or two. Or more. (Aren’t they like rabbits?) I have one of those electronic gizmos that supposedly keeps mice away. It doesn’t. TomCat traps are hard to use, so I prefer Victor. (Knock on wood, I’ve never tripped one of those on my finger!) I have also tried dial traps, which are easier to use, but first of all, they’re more expensive, and secondly, they’ve worked only once.
There was a bat once in the house. I called a critter-removal service, and all I got out of that were some expensive mouse traps. The guy never found the bat, and basically said, suck it up and catch it yourself. I then called the local animal control officer, who did a walk through and didn’t find anything either.
Since there was a small kiddo in the house, one night, the two adults put on hats, gloves, and coats about 11pm one night, and scoured the house until the bat was found. I used a broom to flush it off the back of a vertical blind onto the floor, dumped a big plastic storage container on top of it, and in the morning, slide a thin piece of cardboard underneath.
I called the animal control people back and they, citing the fact that the bat had been in the house for over a week, and with a small child, sent it to MDH. The results came back: No rabies. Thank God!
Oh, and in the warmer months we get Asian Lady Beetles. A good dose of an all-purpose insecticide, applied outside, seems to help.
March 12th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Carpenter ants 6 years ago. We had to replace a window and part of the surrounding wall.
March 12th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
The worst I have is Box Elder bugs, but man am I tired of those damn things.
March 12th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
I have lived in two places with mice, and two with squirrels. Oh, and we also had a wasp nest in the sunporch when we moved into our current place.
The mice in the first place were the worst. My senior year of college I lived in a house that was over 100 years old, and my room had been added on later. Add-on rooms are classic places for rodents to get in, since they are often missing a good foundation. The mice were elsewhere in the house, but they were worst in my room. I remember that I had the flu that year, and in my fever dreams there were mice crawling all over my bed. Less than a week later I came home from class to find mouse turds in the DENT MY HEAD MADE IN MY PILLOW!!! Sick. It was me and two other hippie chicks that lived there, so we had been hesitant about “inhumane” trapping. But that little incident meant war!
March 12th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
I just wanted to chime in and vouch for the inaudible electronic mice deterrents. My uncle was having a mice problem at his factory and my dad recommended the sound deterrents. My uncle was thrilled because they worked for him and he had them put all over the place. He could have invested in a higher grade product than what you can pick up at the store though. I have no idea.
March 12th, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Oh yah, forgot to mention the factory made dog food. So if that isn’t a ringing endorsement I don’t know what is.
March 12th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
We have ants every summer (60 year old house). Cinnamon around the window sill usually drives them away.
A couple summers ago we had a wasp nest in the stucco near our side door. We had to go hardcore on that so that they didn’t burrow down into the walls, using chemicals and borax. We haven’t had any problems since.
March 14th, 2012 at 6:37 am
Mice…have had them twice. First time was the summer of 2009 when my townhome building got a new roof. Tried dial traps, sticky pads, Victor, sound machines, you name it. Thought I got rid of the little buggers, and then I wound up in the hospital for a week and staying with the folks for two weeks after that. Came back home to find my house invaded :( finally broke out the DCon poison. Had ‘em again last summer, thanks to the white trash Iowans renting the unit next door that left their garage door open 24/7. (Both the mice and the renters are gone, thank goodness!).
March 14th, 2012 at 9:11 am
Bats are evil little bastards with a sick sense of humor. The reason you need the rabies shots when they are in your bedroom isn’t because they leave undetectable bites. That is just the story the AMA conspired to come up wityh to give you piece of mind. The real reason you can get rabies is because bats like to dare each other to stand on your nose and crap in your mouth while you sleep. That high pitched squeeking you hear isn’t “sonar”, they are laughing at you. Evil little shits!