wildinvirginia

OK, I admit even before I lived int eh States i liked country music, and I like that song. I also like rural Virginia as opposed to Indianapolis (where I first landed) and my hometown of London .... I thought I loved rural so much I agreed to rent this cute little farm house on an acre or so, in a 104 acre wood/hay farm leased by someone else. I kinda figured I'd be dealing with wildlife ... see our own little set of deer every night, have had my first up close and personal bear encounter (way cool!!!) and have been reassured the coyotes I occasionally hear howling in our woods wont come and steal my 6 month old daughter ... not that I'm leaving her outside of course anyways. I knew there'd be mice, I prayed there'd be no rattlers in the house, the creek I think is far enough away not to have to worry about water moccasins .... and I guess I kind of spaced the spiders and wasps and bees because a) I'm phobic (yeah, great idea to space them then right?) and b) I fell in love with the idyll and c) I'm an idiot. I also believed my OH when he said we'd be able to buy stuff to deal with them,

Well, have been to Lowes etc and am bamboozled (not to mention broke - that will feature in all my posts loll), and don't know what to buy. I bought the thing that seemed to have the longest list of things you kill with it - it recommended spraying directly onto bug and take pleasure (if you're not Buddhist I guess) in watching the hellion die. i swear, first big spider I gave it it's own swimming pool and still i had to smack the you know what out of it with a shoe and then mop up the pool! It just laughed at me I swear. I read a whole very old thread on beasties (it made no suggestions and made me even more itchy and unclean feeling), and know other States have worse but this here girl in Southern Virginia is begging for suggestions.

This is a very old house and I am trying my best to work out a plan to seal gaps but lets face it, I'm dealing with wasps that get in through the window air conditioners, spiders that come from God knows where and ants that I think are small enough to get in by osmosis. Is it worth doing the Home Defense thing? Should I bomb the place? Both. Even if there are still gaps? If anyone has any suggestions on brands or methods I would be so so grateful .... I am afraid my daughter will get bitten by something or more likely, will eat something creepy but it's more the unpleasantness of living with the buggars than the fear of pain or death that's doing me in.

I would be so so grateful for any suggestions or advice - and yes, you can even hurl abuse at me for my shortsighted, overly-romantic and now wimpy demeanor ... just please include some solutions.

Thanks everyone

Lion in Winter

Insects are actually very nutritious. Many cultures south of the depended on them for protein, not have much in the way of grazing and large land animals.

Still, I think you probably need a professional pest control/house sealer type of person. You can bomb all you like, and you will a)have to keep evacuating your house to do that and b) they will come right back in anyway.

Call the Orkin man.

wildinvirginia

Was afraid of that. Am on a seriously tight budget and am totally clueless. Am I deluding myself to think that once summer's over the problem will ease and I therefore have a little time if I can cope with it for now? Thanks so much for responding - I appreciate it

Lion in Winter

It will get a bit better, if it freezes especially. The wasps will go away. Spiders, don't really know.

If on a tight budget go to your local DIY or hardware place and get some of the stuff that you spray around the perimeter of the house on the outside, at ground level. Do it regularly. Also, a surprising number of beasts come up into the house through drains - your kitchen sink drain, bath, and especially if you have drains in your basement floor. Put a little bleach down there regularly to keep the creepy crawlies down. They hate it. It's very un-green, but so is all repellent stuff. If you have a septic tank, however, you probably can't do the bleach thing. I had a centipede infestation, and the outside spray plus the bleach worked like a charm.

For wasps, have you got screens on the windows? Make sure they fit, and if they don't make good use of some insulating tape.

Which bit of London? My old city, too.

Mummy in the foothills

Raid, we buy Raid in all kinds of delicious flavors, We have the Wasps and hornets one (it's brilliant) the fly one (not as good as the toxic fumes we used as kids in the 70;s but still better than everything else) and the spider one. I usually vacuum the spiders up or send my 6 year old after them, she has a way and they like to climb in the plastic box she has, I leave them there for Dh to deal with.
We have Clark, he comes by every other month and I still need some Raid spray. Clark keeps out the ants and the scorpions.

Oh we have sprayed 6 wasps nests this summer, Dh is allergic and I'm becoming a good shot with a can of spray.

wildinvirginia

Thanks again - went and bought some insulating tape to shore up thenew screens .... didn't know about the bleach nd septic tank ... we're on one and well water .... see so much to learn!

I am originally from South London, born in Lewisham and lived in the Blackheath area but we moved out to Kent when i was about ten - the Bromley area. Before coming out here I'd gone coastal and live in Whitstable which I miss more than most of the people I left behind lol

Lion in Winter

Perimeter spray is your friend, and it's not too expensive. Ask for advice in the shop as to which one works well on the local beasts. I think you can't use bleach with a septic tank because it kills the, um, things that you need in there to, er, break down stuff. Not sure though.

I started life in Paddington, then south to Wimbledon, then back up to Pimlico. Family was all Sussex though, both sides, born and bred - near Storrington, Pulborough, Bury, Thakeham and Haywards Heath.

Bob

Don't know about out your way, but where I'm at, if you've got a hornet/bee problem, get in touch with the town hall and they'll get it taken care of.

Any other bugs and you've got to sort them out yourself.

Those sprays for the perimeter aren't to bad, but get the ones with the battery powered handle that shoots a constant spray, much better than hand pump as you need a continuous spray all around.

penguinbar

I had a problem with ants a few months ago. All these years in Manhattan and this was a first. The exterminator that does the restaurant where I work says it's the worst ant problem he's seen in 20 years! I didn't want to use anything poisonous beacause I have a cat. They were coming in the living room window and going for my TV and hubby's PS3.No where near the kitchen at all. I read about using a mixture of dishwashing liquid and rubbing alcohol. Also salt and talcum powder. I put the salt and talcum powder on the window sill and on the floor behind the TV. Also on the door to the kitchen just in case. I sprayed a few times a day with the alcohol dishwashing liquid. In two days no more ants. I'm not sure which concoction did it but it worked!. I was not over run by any means but I was concerned that I could have been!, Maybe it will work on other types of bugs as well.

As a kid there was a hornets nest outside my bedroom window. We had professionals come to remove it.

another bloody yank

We used to live in a similar area and quickly figured out that trying to combat the invading hordes was a futile effort. We didn't have the $$ for exterminators to come out and the amount of chemical they would have had to use made us nervous. We had chickens that roamed the yard and I sold the eggs so I wasn't comfortable doing much to the grass in the way of poison.

If we didn't have chickens, I've heard good things about "sevin" in granular form. You broadcast it around the perimeter of the house using some kind of seeder. For ants inside the house we used those trays filled with clear syrup made by Terro. They seemed to work. If I happened to find an ant run outside the house on the foundation I had a jug of stuff that came with an attached sprayer head. You pulled a handle on the back of the head to create pressure in the tank. That would clear it up for a while.

Try to keep the area just outside of the house clear of stuff bugs like. Woodpiles, old landscaping timbers, railroad ties, sand, piled up leaves etc...

Spiders... Just keep telling yourself that 99.9% of them are harmless and that spiders kill other bugs. That said, learn to identify the nasty ones, (goes for snakes too) don't stick your hand in dark places (under furniture, in shoes that have sitting in the back of the closet forever) without taking a good look first.

Mice... set a bunch of traps baited with peanut butter. Get a cat.


Finally, accept the fact that you will never eradicate all the pests. There are more of them than there are of you and they will not quit. You live in the woods, not a new ranch home in suburbia and critters of assorted sizes come with the territory. Learn to live with it or you'll drive yourself nuts.

Post again in the spring when the woods begin their yearly effort to reclaim your yard.

Sheepdip

Don't use bleach in a septic system as as said before it can damage the good bacteria you need.

On the bug front, we use a perimeter spray from Lowes which keeps most of the bugs at bay and the mozzys down (a problem here). It just attaches to the hosepipe and follow the instructions. We also use topical sprays (like Raid etc.) for hornets nests and the odd ant colony that springs up.

We're also encouraging bats (there are some in the nearby woods) as they can eat up to 3000 mozzys in a night!

MrEmjoy

If it's an old house, you really just need to start patching her up and eventually you will get on top of it, I am forever pulling badly done DIY out of this house and trying to get on top of 8 years of neglect.

The small ants, sugar ants, are a pain in the arse, if you find them in the kitchen, a bit of ground cinnamon is a non hazardous way of dealing with them when the little one is around, although sadly, every time I eat a cinnamon bun I think of ants.

The barrier sprays work, you may have to re-apply before the stated 'works for 6 months' etc. I used an indoor/outdoor spray last time that sprays around the bottom of kitchen cabinets and also window frames, because old wooden windows are an easy squeeze for ants. I always sprayed at night when my L.O was sleeping, that way she's less likely to want to know what's going on.

Good luck.

MrEmjoy

How do you do that??

another bloody yank

http://www.wildlifedamagecontrol.net/strategi.php


http://www.bat-houses.org/

MrEmjoy

When I googled, all I got was Rabies warnings.