LIONS, TIGERS AND BUGS, OH NO!

This entry is long overdue and will be a compilation of my “Battle of the Bugs”, or “What I Did Over the Summer”.

Things that bite in the night...  All of the various biting bugs were really glad that we arrived at our new home in Tennessee. New restaurant in town, yee haw, “let’s go taste some of that California blood.” And, boy did they ever. It didn’t take me long to realize that the mosquitoes were eating me alive. Yes, and sneaky buggers to boot! I didn’t hear them buzz or feel them bite… until the bumps. My legs looked like I had some sort of dreaded death inducing disease. New rule; as much as I hate insect repellent, I have one can in the garage, one can on the patio and some in my bathroom cabinet. Lined up… deodorant, anti-itch cream, insect repellent and anti-monkey butt. (I’ll get to the monkey butt later).

A word about spiders... I didn’t even think that the world had this many spiders. Holy arachnophobia! Keep in mind that our home had sat vacant for three months before our arrival and without any insect control chemical applied the spiders were literally coming out of the wood work. Although not too bad inside the house as I’ll bet there was still some residual spay still effectively working, the out of doors and the detached garage were overrun with spiders that looked like a tiny pea with long ol’ legs. 

Shortly after we arrived, I attacked (cleaned) the screened in patio.  I have never seen pollen up close and personal until I started cleaning the patio tiles; it was thick on the tile and caked the screens.  Shop vac in tow I went to town on the patio.  Little did I know that spiders lived under the vinyl siding on the house.  They were literally coming out of the woodwork.  I took on the stance of a sword fencing artist and sucked up every spider that dared to poke it's eight ugly legs in my path. 

Ewww

I hoped that I would not have nightmares of those spiders crawling out of the shop vac to get even with me.

More on spiders... I don’t know maybe it's a mid-spring nature thing, but shortly after we moved I was out walking one of the dogs in the driveway and spotted this huge, and I’ll shout it HUGE spider. I yelled for Brian to come and look and he comes out to see that the ruckus was. He looked and asked if I wanted him to kill it. Truth be known, I didn’t expect an execution, but since he was willing to come to my rescue, well heck yes, put it down! I have never seen the likes of what happened next… Brian found a flip-flop and tapped the spider and about 100 baby spiders started scrambling in every direction. Gross!!! Here’s a photo of the spider about 12 hours after it’s demise. 

Did I mention that Brian doesn’t like to kill anything, well except stinging type flying creatures...

Stinging type flying creatures...  Without a moments respite, I had my run in with the mud-daubers.   I knew we had them; I would see small nests everywhere.  Every time we went to Lowe's or Ace Hardware I would grab a can of "wasp & hornet" spray.  I pretty much kept a can in my tool belt.  Well, I really didn't wear a tool belt, but I always had a can handy.

One morning I decided to put a couple of bug bombs in the attic space above the detached garage.  I grabbed the cans on got on special at the Dollar General, newspapers (as instructed) and headed up the stairs to the man door.

Who knew? I was certainly unsuspecting; all I wanted to do was kill some bugs.

 I got about half way up the stairs and all of a sudden a mud-dauber was hovering right around my face.  I started swatting and then another and another!  I made the flash decision that I wasn't winning this battle since I was being stung and my swats were doing squat.  I turned to descend the stairs and as quickly as I wanted to get away from my adversaries I needed to be careful not to fall down the outside stairs.  Finally down the stairs and ran to the house screaming for Brian. 

I counted five assaults on my hands, arms and legs.  Once calmed down, I got pissed.  I took mud-daubers to the net and everything I read pointed out that they will not sting unless provoked.  Bull pucky I say!  Then husband Brian mentioned that I was trying to smack them around.  So, okay, they were provoked when I stomped up the stairs (rocked their world I guess) and I guess they did feel provoked when the human arms tried to knock them into the  next county. 

Not to be outdone, I wildly went through unpacked boxes to find my sweatpants and a hoodie.  Put my battle armour on, grabbed a full can of wasp spray and headed to the offending fortress.

Assuming it was somewhere under the stairs, imagine the horror of finding this community of nests.  After emptying an entire can of spray I thought I had won.  Come to find out, a few weeks later, Brian was going to go up the stairs to the attic and after about two steps the mud-daubers started flying around again.  I was stumped.  After careful surveillance I realized that nest I had been looking for was actually under the railing.  I did what needed to be done and on to the next adventure.

Coming next.... Snakes!