Do you have to deal with wildlife where you live?

[dulcemariamar]

I live in a big city and I never had any problems until last week when we had a small ant invasion in my house. It was horrible, I had nightmares about the whole thing. I think I finally got rid of them but I cant imagine living in places where you have to deal with a lot of wildlife.

I am such a city girl.

Do you come acrosss a lot of animasl/bugs where you live?

[bugabean]

We have the occasional spider, bee, or whatever, but it's a lot less than I dealt with in Minneapolis or in Florida, even without window screens! I still want screens though

[aMrsin09]

OMG Where is wise rita I need a ROTFLMAO gif.

Or do you guys not want the Aussie girls to play? ;-)

[dulcemariamar]

Yes!!! I want the Aussie girls to tell us your stories.

[dulcemariamar]

Publius. Primates scare the shit out of me. After, hearing the story about how they ripped the face off of a women, I can never look at them the same.

[NomadicMama]

We lived in an urban area before we moved, and now we live on the outskirts of a small-ish town. There are lots of birds and bugs--oh, and snails, much to my son's delight!!! I have been told about the hares and how big they are. I've seen one, but from a distance.

While I like to see primates at the zoo, I would not want one in my living space.

Aussie girls, post away!!!!

[mrsukyankee]

We have urban foxes in our neighbourhood but they are scared of everything. The bugs are primarily bees, flies and small spiders.

[americaninoz]

we get cockroaches & caterpillar like things in our house and spiders *shudder* I have to check dd's cubby house before I let her go in - to check for spiders and knock down any new webs
now and then we get possums around - I always think they are cats at first
no snakes yet - thank god!! but we are in a pretty built up area

[aMrsin09]

Well lets start with:

I can't have a cat because the pythons hunt them (confirmed by the cattery in my neighborhood) and I have seen a python, almost as long as the street is wide, go into my neighbors yard or my yard. I'm not sure, it doesn't matter I screeched like a girl anyway.

We have to worry about Tiapans and Red Bellied Black Snakes.

The Queensland Tarantula is not poisonous to humans but can be deadly to dogs.

We occasionally have Huntsmen spiders and wolf spiders and barking spiders. They are not poisonous per se but descriptions all say to seek immediate medical attn if bitten. They are big hairy and fangy.

We finally found out what Roof Thing 1 is and that would be a Juvenile Yellow Spotted Monitor.

On the cuter side:
We have Stripped Possums
Bandicoots
Wild Scrub Turkeys
Orange Footed Scrub Fowl
Kookaburras
Sulphur - Crested Cockatoos
Black Cockatoos

You all can google is you wish. I'm not going to give anyone nightmares.
Oh and all this is just in my yard. If you want to get into why I won't go swimming, let me know.

[Cheesecake]

We live at the edge of town, our tard ends at a little canal and behund that rhere's a green zone. On the frinr side if the house we pip nly have ants and D's at house cats. Behind the house there are ants, snails and slugs, mice, lots of different ducks and coots and such, pheasants, bats, many different birds, and apparently ring snakes, which I choose to deny.
Not all of them enter my yard though.

I have fat fingers, please excuse typos!

[pittpurple]

The only positive side of the stupid weather in Scotland is that there are really very few bugs. In the countryside there's a ridiculous midge problem in the summer, but it's fine in the cities.
We had a mouse a couple times but we live in a flat and they weren't menacing at all.

[Cheesecake]

Oh and obviously spiders, mosquitoes , moths and flies...

I have fat fingers, please excuse typos!

[aMrsin09]

yeah, I forgot to add the White Tailed Water rats (they don't really get up by the house too much) and the ever lovin freakin geckos! effers.

[wise_rita]

May 28, 2012 4:19:04 GMT -5 aMrsin09 said:

OMG Where is wise rita I need a ROTFLMAO gif.

Will this suffice?



I don't even see dogs on leashes my area is so urban. So...yeah.

[GilliC]

May 28, 2012 4:06:24 GMT -5 @publius said:

There were some monkeys playing on the balcony of the building across from ours this morning. I wish I'd taken a picture.

ETA: I am definitely keeping our balcony door closed after seeing that. The last thing I want to find when I wake up in the morning is wild monkeys tearing apart my living room.

We lived on the edge of a nature preserve in Texas, and we used to leave the balcony door open so the cats could go out. My Indian MIL was shocked, because weren't we worried that monkeys would come in and destroy the place?! Hehe! But yeah, apparently they're nasty and destructive and best avoided.

I live in downtown Oslo now, and there is almost no wildlife. Barely even birds. Just an occasional pigeon or sea gull, and sometimes I'm lucky enough to see a little wren or something. However, the other day the trains out of Oslo were all canceled because a moose wandered into one of the track tunnels and they had to go find it.

[clickerish]

I find where I live now to be weirdly animal-free. Other than the requisite birds outside and occasional ant inside, there's nothing. This is why we get into arguments. My SO who is all city all the time (but pretends otherwise) never wants me dispatch anything. Even ants, she wants me to put them outside politely with a word of encouragement--I kid you not. And this annoys me, because it's an ant. She thinks she's so badass and recently wanted a monkey (because of a television commercial)--I have had a monkey, and those bastards bite. Then I got accused of being hostile to animals. I am not hostile, but wildlife is wild, people.

[fernane]

The only wildlife we deal with are pests, especially during the summer when ants get into absolutely everything. They will come by the hundreds over a crumb on the table and even manage to get into Tupperware sometimes. Everything has to be tightly sealed and most of it refrigerated.
There's also huge rats, but thankfully none have gotten in the house yet. And these weird insect type things that have cocoon things that stick to the walls. I have no idea what the heck they are and just brush them off, but they always come back.
Hardly anyone even has dogs cause they are so often stolen to be someone's dinner.

[dulcemariamar]

Fernane: As I said in my OP, last week I had a small ant invasion. I was looking on the Internet for some natural ways to kill them. I found one that worked and I havent seen one since.

In a spray bottle, mix one tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of dish soap, and the rest of the bottle fill it with water. If you spray it on the ants, they die right away. Later, I sprayed around the room, a few times a day and two days later they were gone.

[anna7602]

I have lived mainly in big cities and had mice in several apartments over the years (thankfully, none in any places we owned and none in Paris, so far). I'm not sure if you would consider mice "wildlife," but I hated having them around. I even had them in one of my offices in NYC.

[allibally]

We have an ant problem. I'm don't even want to know what's going on in my apartment right now while I am gone. Then we have the centipede creatures and spiders. Outside we have giant city rats and lots of squirrels.

Across the street is a community garden that was a lot of bunnies which are adorable!

Oddest creature in Chicago is the coyote. I have yet to see one since I'm not walking at dawn or dusk. But They have dens in a park not to at from us.

[elenetxu]

Coyote dens in a park in Chicago!?
Wow. I'm surprised they haven't been relocated.
I friggin' hate trying to sleep when the coyotes are howling back home. They creep me out!

Things aren't that bad where I am. Lots of bugs and birds. Wild boar and deer in the fields.

[heightsyankee]

I live right in the middle of the 4th largest city in the country. We have opossums, raccoons, all manner of birds, snakes, bats. We even have some endangered birds that nest along the bayou system. Someone posted a picture to FB of a Great Blue Heron in the middle of the jogging path that goes through my neighborhood. I love it, though.

I don't think insects are exclusive to suburban or rural areas.

[crimsonandclover]

You all heard my snake story a few weeks ago. Around my parents' house there's lots of benign wildlife since we live in the country - deer, racoons, opossums, mice, snakes, spiders, etc. Each can pose a little nuisance, but nothing's really dangerous. There are a very few slightly more dangerous animals, though, including the lone coyote or fox. I've never heard of anyone being attacked in the area by anything. I'm most scared of the bees and wasps.

In Germany pretty much all we have are insect pests. And the two-legged kind who let their dogs poop on my yard and don't clean it up, but that's another matter.

[Cheesecake]

May 28, 2012 8:36:17 GMT -5 dulcemariamar said:

In a spray bottle, mix one tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of dish soap, and the rest of the bottle fill it with water. If you spray it on the ants, they die right away. Later, I sprayed around the room, a few times a day and two days later they were gone.

Tried this tonight after you posted it, and it's the best solution I've tried so far. My ants are immune to everything - I've tried every single type of poison or cleaning product available - nothing killed them. However this killed a bunch of them. Yay!!!!

[allibally]

May 28, 2012 12:35:20 GMT -5 elenetxu said:

Coyote dens in a park in Chicago!?
Wow. I'm surprised they haven't been relocated.
I friggin' hate trying to sleep when the coyotes are howling back home. They creep me out!

They even have little trackers on them. There is a whole website about it. Really neat that they roam pretty far. I haven't seen any unfortunately nor heard them. But a city has a lot of noise pollution.

They haven't relocated them because they haven't been a nuisance. They haven't really gone after anyone walking their dog. Plus they help take care of the rats.

[fernane]

May 28, 2012 8:36:17 GMT -5 dulcemariamar said:

Fernane: As I said in my OP, last week I had a small ant invasion. I was looking on the Internet for some natural ways to kill them. I found one that worked and I havent seen one since.

In a spray bottle, mix one tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of dish soap, and the rest of the bottle fill it with water. If you spray it on the ants, they die right away. Later, I sprayed around the room, a few times a day and two days later they were gone.

Wow, thanks for this! Will try today!

[CakeLover]

Yes, we get it all. Geckos, snakes, mice, ants, possums. The scariest was the 5ft long carpet python that was on our deck. I called a snake catcher to deal with that SOB. Best money I've ever spent.