We got Carpenter ants around the front entrance to the house one year, had to call an exterminator to spray the nest, which was outside under the front porch. Those little fuckers stuck around for weeks afterwards, which is apparently how long the poison takes to eradicate them all.
We pretty much always have mice in the attic, despite the exterminator calls and the snap-traps we set. Occasionally we catch one in the garage. They never manage to infiltrate the rest of the house because we have 5 cats and each one lives for the moment a mouse is spotted so that they can catch it and play with its barely-breathing corpse before they try to eat it. We don’t use rodent poison for that reason, just in case the cats get one.
three times:
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rats - tore out two walls and a ceiling looking for their ingress. Found the hole, sealed it, took advantage of the situation to insulate and refinish the room, no problems since.
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mice - set traps while improving home infra. Raised shelves, removed things acting at mouse ladders, started keeping grains in sealed, hard-sided containers. Went around the outside of the house removing clutter and harboring plants, planted herbs that repel rodents instead. Sprayed essential oils for several weeks as a deterrent, and placed a few permanent traps as check for effectiveness. No mice in the years since.
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water roaches - boiled or threw out the items they seemed attracted to, used chemical scent obliterators on any adjacent surfaces. Placed pet-safe gel poison behind all the furniture in the kitchen. No problems since.
The joys of a fixer-upper home.
The ongoing pests are flies and birds. This summer I’ll be exposing and reinsulating the vent area above the finished attic and replacing the damaged louvers that the birds have nested in. The flies seem to crawl straight through the window sashes, though, no idea how to solve that one.
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Childhood spring one year, conditions were perfect for millipedes. The basement floor was covered in them. I mean covered with the floor barely visible.
They weren’t damaging or dangerous, just disgusting. My dad put on his outdoor shoes and just walked around in tiny steps smashing them. He walked for hours. Then scraped them up with a plastic snow shovel and threw them outdoors for the birds to go wild. Then walked some more.
No other spring since has resulted in those sorts of numbers. It was interesting to see my dad’s reaction: the disgust and fascination and satisfaction. God help him if he ever discovers pimple popper videos and the like, we would lose him to the algorithm.
This is one of the worst things I have ever read
Why, thank you. Your comment is worth more than all the upvotes.
Yes, it was terrible. She was super invasive. She wouldn’t leave even after I broke up with her. We were both on the lease, so I couldn’t kick her out, so I just quit paying rent. We both got evicted.
Although extreme, that did finally work. Worst pest ever.
I had a pair of foxes raise a litter of kits under my garden shed. They were so cute and fun to watch!
Well they left me with fleas. I had to seal off the foundation of the shed, cut holes in the floor, and drop some nasty pesticides (phosgene) under, and seal it back up.
Mice isnan ongoing issue. We have tube traps they get stuck in, they get drowned in a bucket of water and then thrown out for the birds to eat. Tube traps are very effective if poison isn’t an option.
The only thing I ever had were food moths, after leaving an open container of flour out and putting it away after a day. It was pretty disgusting having their larvae crawling around, but luckily there are parasitic wasps you can order that kill their eggs (they look like tiny specks of dust, not normal wasps).
I have ants. Teeny tiny little ones. I’ve tried sprays, repellents, traps. The sprays only work if I spray the ants directly. The repellants don’t work at all. They ignore the traps. They just won’t go away.
Have you considered getting an anteater as a pet?
Wasps nested in my walls. I sucked them out with a Vacuum then put in some insecticide.
Here is a picture of the wasps in my vacuum:
Well that’s nightmare fuel. Cudos to you for sorting it.
It was pretty bad. Every day a few wasps would find there way inside the house through lightning fixtures. I was freaking out, but some googling and advice from friends helped me sort it out. When I went outside I was able to quickly identify where they were coming in since there were so many wasps coming and going. The vacuum made them furious but they just kept attacking the nozzle and getting sucked in. Once I had sucked up the bulk of them it was safe to inject some insecticide and then eventually caulk up the entrance.
Cockroaches. It was bad. They were everywhere. You couldn’t open a door without them falling from the cracks in the doorframe on your face.
Boric acid is what helped as recommended by reddit. We used to clean, and spray with Pyrethrins before that but that only kills the visible ones. Most of the roaches are in their holes and you’ll never reach them like that.
What’s great about boric acid is that it kills slowly meaning they can infect each other before they die in a chain reaction. They infect even the hidden ones when they go groom each other.
So clean the area, dry it, then just spread the powder where they usually hang out. It’ll take a week to notice any effects. Apply again if area gets wet.
Another great thing is unless you ingest a huge amount or inhale it in your lungs, boric acid is mostly safe for humans. Unlike the sprays which always gave us symptoms.
Not me, but my parents, though I discovered it during a visit.
Bats. They had a bat infestation. This was up at the highest point of the house in the loft, they were remodeling and left the walls open - a hole to the outside let one in, and I guess a bunch decided it was a nice place to hang out. There were dozens.
As for dealing with it - bats are endangered, so you can’t exterminate them. If I remember correctly the total spend was just over 10 grand. This also included installing multiple permanent one way doors so if any bats manage to get in again, they have multiple ways to get out.
Got the occasional mouse, but I usually only notice after my cats got to them first.
Or they hunt them outside and bring the corpse back, really couldn’t tell.
I live in an old house, so sometimes mice find their way in. Never really a huge problem though. I catch them with live traps and let them out a few km away. Don’t think I’ve had any in the last couple months.
Currently dealing with mice. They can’t actually get into the home, but they’re in the walls and attic. I’ve got traps up a few places but they rarely catch anything. I and caught one under my kitchen sink last night while trying to make a midnight snack. Caught me completely by surprice, but I scrambled for the biggest closest knife I could find, and chopped the motherfucker.
So I’m currently apparently dealing with it both passively with traps, and actively through brute force.
Have had good luck with electronic traps. Caught mice and a couple of rats that were hanging around our driveway and chewing up car cables.
I got one with wifi that sends a message when it caught something. Good for out of the way spots. Trap with peanut butter. For deterrence, ended up spraying the area with capsicum pepper spray.
https://www.victorpest.com/store/mouse-control/electronic-traps
That’s nuts.
The mice here are very small and very fast. There’s just no way I could get one with a knife and I’m pretty spry.
I’ve learned a few things about dealing with mice in my time…
If you’ve seen one you probably have dozens.
If they die in a wall cavity there’s nothing you can do. They will stink, you’ve just got to wait it out. Used ground coffee in a dish or whatever tends to absorb the smell.
There’s lots of different types of traps. You probably need to experiment with different types. For example the spring loaded ones don’t work for very small mice. Also I dislike the no-kill ones because then you have to deal with a live mouse. One of the most impressive I’ve seen is like a lid on a bucket with a trapdoor - it’s what farmers use in a plague.
Poison is another good option but be aware it usually has an attractant. If you can hear mice in your ceiling you don’t want to put the poison in your ceiling because you’ll get more mice in your ceiling. Put the poison outside to draw the mice out.
I was pretty surprises I got it too. It scrambled to get under my trash bucket for a bit which gave me the chance to chop. While there’s definately a fair few mice, it’s not like it’s an infestation. I grew up on a farm so I’m pretty used to them.
Thanks for the advice though :)
Cats are also a good option.
My cat got rid of the mice issue, but then there’s a roach issue. Cats unfortunately cannot get rid of roaches. 🤷♂️
Termites.
Mutiple professional treatments to eradicate them from the property and surrounds, then major structural repairs, for which the place had to be vacant.
0/10, do not recommend.
Out of curiosity, were you on the hook for the entire cost? As it, was any of it covered by insurance?
It doesn’t sound like much fun at all.
Generally insurance won’t cover something like that.
