<p>It sounds as if you folks have much more enlightened pest-control services in your area than we do. When we had a raccoon in our basement several years ago, the cops gave us the name of a guy who turned to be one mean old hunter. He set traps for the raccoon, charged us $150, and made it clear that the meat and fur were all his. Creepy.</p>
<p>yuck
We have had raccoons but not since I stopped leaving the back porch door open- but they are BIG!
and mean
I picked up a broom and waved it & he didn’t care at all.
I think I told this story before but my husbands workshop is finally out in the detached garage- he leaves the door open unless it is cold and one night he saw a raccoon heading over to our pond (stocked with yummy goldfish) He picked up a BB gun and shot the raccoon- the raccoons fur was so dense that he just looked at H- like to say What the …? and brushed his chest- the BB fell to the ground.</p>
<p>Of course when we were in our other house and they were 30 yards away teaching their baby how to climb the tree in the snow it was cute :)</p>
<p>Bees? Check. Big hive of them in an old oak tree. Beekeepers dealt with it and relocated it.</p>
<p>Best critter? Big huge white Barn Owl. Flew down our chimney and was soaring around our living room, perching on the beams in our open-beamed ceiling. Could not figure out how to exit despite all the doors & windows. </p>
<p>Animal control came & netted him, then released him outside. Just gorgeous to watch him wing away.</p>
<p>Bees- I have a dozen hives right now. It is a very bad idea to poison them. It leaves all the wax and honey to melt and come through the dry wall and attract ants and roaches. Much better to have a beekeeper deal with them. Even without cutting into walls, you can sometimes trap out the hive and then have another hive rob out the honey, then the wax moths will take care of the wax. If you poison, none of that works.</p>
<p>Raccoon – We have one that visits my shop anytime the door is open after dark. He loves the cat food, as does the oppossum that visited all winter. I also had 3 juvenile coons last fall that were in the cat food. I like to leave the door open a few inches for the cat, but now I try to close it at dark. </p>
<p>We also get the occasional coyote and I have a pair of roadrunners. Kind of brings to mind a cartoon :).</p>
<p>The biggest mess was the beavers eating my cypress trees and hollowing out the island in my lake. They say they mate for life. They damn sure do around my place, a very short life.</p>
<p>We’ve had scores of flying squirrels living in our attic. We thought they were cute little squirrel babies coming in through the chimney until we chased them and they literally flew across the room. We got a have-a-heart trap and every night for 3 weeks, drove the captured little big-eyed buggers far away from home and released them.</p>
<p>God only knows what is living in the walls of my son’s bedroom. We have an ongoing battle with roof rats, and I think we get an occasional squirrel running around in the attic crawlspace. I hear the little varments scampering around, sometimes. I finally figured out that these critters will go wherever the food is, so filling up the birdfeeder usually gets them out, then I seal up any entrances I can find. </p>
<p>In the Spring and Fall, we stuff steel wool into every crack and crevice we can find around the outside of the house. Our pest control guy told us that the little basta**s don’t like to gnaw the steel wool, so they will avoid using those entrances. Clear duct tape keeps the rain out. We’ve been doing this for the past three years, and we still get an occasional roof rat, but it has cut down on the overhead traffic. 
</p>
<p>We had an incident with yellow jackets in the attic that was straight out of a Stephen King novel. I went into my ds’s bedroom one day (back when there was actually room on the floor to walk), and I heard a strange buzz coming from the ceiling. I got up on a footstool to listen more closely, and when I reached up to feel the area where I thought I saw movement, a tiny black leg poked through the skin of the paint, followed by chomping mandibles and a shiny, black head. Within seconds, yellow jackets started breaking through the paint where they had been chewing through the drywall from above. </p>
<p>I ran into the other room, threw on a jacket, grabbed my trusty roll of duct tape, and started taping over the area where they were trying to break through. I had to do this in a closed bedroom while the few who had managed to break through were trying to attack me. After I smacked the bejeezus out of all of them with a newspaper, I called the pest control guy who came out and shot some kind of lethal powder up into the hole where they were getting in. So much for the yellow jackets. </p>
<p>Now, I am diligent about placing yellow jacket traps well away from the house in the spring and all summer long. :)</p>
<p>I got up on a footstool to listen more closely, and when I reached up to feel the area where I thought I saw movement, a tiny black leg poked through the skin of the paint, followed by chomping mandibles and a shiny, black head. >></p>
<p>Oh my gosh, Sluggbugg. What a horrible experience that must have been! Although I did kind of chuckle at the image you painted.</p>
<p>Carolyn, I have no fear of crawly things, but that was something! :eek:</p>
<p>About ten years ago, I toured the house of a prospective client, a wealthy doctor couple with three children. As we crossed the balconey in their two storey entry hall, the man spotted a couple of black spots on the opposite wall. Assuming they were spitballs, he started to holler his oldest S’s name. By the time the son arrived for a closer inspection, hundreds and hundreds of black spots appeared on the wall.</p>
<p>Termites! It was a scene from a horror movie. Not sorry I didn’t get that job…LOL.</p>
<p>Suburban life as seen by Ben Jones, communications manager for the MIT Office of Admissions. </p>
<p>Bees, poison ivy, snakes, carpenter ants, rats…</p>
<p>Dorothy, we’re not in Somerville anymore</p>
<p>By Ben Jones | July 23, 2005</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/23/dorothy_were_not_in_somerville_anymore/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/23/dorothy_were_not_in_somerville_anymore/</a></p>
<p>Marite,</p>
<p>LOL! 
He doesn’t mention my nemesis: chiggers!</p>
<p>My roommate at SMU was from Montana. His first encounter with chiggers landed him in a hospital bed for 3 days. No resistance at all I guess.</p>
<p>Thanks Marite, that was hysterical! BTW, it soooooo good to see you back! </p>
<p>Yellowjackets are truly scarey. They are among the most aggressive of the wasps species, and like all wasp, they can sting over and over again—and don’t hesitate to do so! They often nest underground, so a person clearing brush or other unruly areas of property can inadvertantly stir them up. If the nest is large enough, one can easily be overcome by the swarm. Literally hundreds of stings is are not uncommon. People have died from such attacks.</p>
<p>My D stepped on a yellowjacket nest on a side trail when we were hiking in Shenandoah National Park a few years ago. They chased her down the trail as she ran away and I even got a few on me as I followed her. I guess she was lucky she only got about 20 stings and I got about three, not hundreds! It is also lucky she wasn’t allergic, since we were about 1 1/2 miles from the car.</p>
<p>Ah, yellowjackets, we have a lovely paper nest in the eves, you can look out the upstairs window and watch the activity, but the window doesn’t operate, so last week, DH and I donned thick layers of gear, duct taped our pants to our boots, double gloved, wore hats and ski goggles. Then we took turns standing as high up as we could brave on a fully-extended extension ladder…yes, I got higher than him! The person on the ground held the ladder and the person up top held the pressure washer hose and blasted the heck out of the nest which is in the tippy top eves of the second story…probably 25-30 feet up. The ladder was not high enough to apply direct pressure and the goggles keps steaming up like a scuba mask. The technique ended up being one of hold your arm in the air and blast the h*ll out of the spot where we hoped they were!! Then feel chunks, mysterious things, big water drops, angry hornets, etc falling down…keep your face down and keep the water pressure up and hope they drown mid-air and are not crawling on you!! :o In the mean time, the ground crew should not look up, except to direct the aim initially, then do the yellow-jacket polka, trying to spot all the live ones and squish them dead.</p>
<p>Yeah, not the smartest activity ever, but no stings and the nest is about 80% gone. We are watching to see if any critters try to resurrect it! DH gets bravery points as a bee sting a few days before had caused his eye to swell shut he felt killing the nest was a fitting revenge on all stinging creatures.</p>
<p>SMom:
Wow! A barn owl in your living room. Fabulous. I’d be thrilled if I could see one in the wild, much less in my house. You must live in a great place. Barn owls are getting scarce these days.</p>
<p>Sluggbugg, I had a similar experience with yellow jackets in our bathroom ceiling. Exterminator injected some powdered poison in the ceiling. Then we waited a week and had to replace some dry wall. But what are yellow jacket traps?? Never heard of those but I want some!</p>
<p>Our big critter claim to fame is snakes. The first summer that we were in this house (an rural outpost of suburban DC) we had 47 snakes in and around the house. The most exciting was a 5 black rat snake in our foyer. I had seen him earlier in the day in a window well and tried to coax him out (screaming doesn’t work with snakes, by the way) So I covered the window well because I had about 5 kids under the age of 11 running around in the yard that day. Well I guess the spawn of Satan felt a little claustrophobic–he found his way into the basement ceiling. As I came out of the kitchen to answer the front door, he was just coming up the basement steps. After screaming (again) I answered the door. It was the mom of one of my kids’ playmates. She very calmly told me to get a broom and she swept him out the front door. She’s my hero!</p>
<p>Our neighborhood is overrun with deer–just the absolute bane of gardeners!. But this summer we are enjoying the sighting of a baby albino deer. It’s otherworldly.</p>
<p>For yellow jackets, Home Depot and other type places sell the long range spray that telephone linemen use. It shoots 20-30 feet and drops them in their tracks.</p>
<p>sluggbugg: "I had to do this in a closed bedroom while the few who had managed to break through were trying to attack me. After I smacked the bejeezus out of all of them with a newspaper, I called the pest control guy who came out and shot some kind of lethal powder up into the hole where they were getting in. So much for the yellow jackets. "</p>
<p>Gee, sluggbugg, I guess we now know which bugs you were slugging !!</p>
<p>In addition to having hornets build a nest against D’s bedroom storm window (she could open other windows) several years ago, we recently entertained a flying squirrel for a couple of days in our house. We think it fell down the chimney into the fireplace in the basement and made its way around the basement and first floor through the ductwork. Eventually, we got it out the basement door, but it really was cute! (Northern flying squirrel)</p>
<p>H had a close encounter with wasps when he ran the lawn mower over their nest in a drain pipe buried under the grass in the backyard a few years back. Talk about running for cover . . . !</p>