Multi legs & Hairy & pinchers OH MY!!!Sigh.Bugs.Bugs are an important part of the eco system. Right now the humble honey bee is fighting for survival against another bug- the mite. Seems the mite gets into the nest and feeds on the bee, and it is ether born deformed, or it dies. We have lost 50 % of the bee population, and that can affect 30 % of the crops that need the bees to pollinate the blossoms so fruit is formed.There are good bugs, and bad bugs. The rule of thumb that I have is, good bugs stay outside, bad bugs cross the threshold of my home and are dealt with. (SMACK! WHACK AAAGAAHHAAAAAAAAAA)Spiders seem to be the bug of the week. I know, they are not truly a bug, but they bug me. It’s not the tiny cute spider who waves a leg at you while it’s spinning a pretty web. Oh no. the spiders that I find are huge black and hairy. Wolf spiders. LOTS of them. Not just one or two, but dozens of them. The person who owned my house before me didn’t live here for five years. His agent came through and put baskets of that stuff to take smells away, and she had to have sprayed the carpet or something. Anyway, two weeks after moving in and having the carpets scrubbed I discover that – the carpet really stunk. So, I ripped it up and dragged it outside and the next morning I discover over 60 web nests of wolf spiders and the neighbors had none. That was way too many for me to even imagine dealing with.I still find them. They love the bathtub right behind the curtain, and I have taken to bringing a shoe into the shower with me. The other bugs that I have seen in my house – well there have been a total count of three of a very strange huge beetle, almost two inches long, that the first one disappeared and then a week later one waddled when I moved the ferret cage, and the third was caught on a glue board next to three of the huge wolf spiders.There are other very small things that buzz in the night in front of the monitor, and the infrequent house fly, and on a very bad day, a silver fish will wiggle across the back outside porch.On the worst of days, there are the wasps. Oh, how I hate them. So far, I have managed to let them be if they let me be. I have three types, One looks like the typical wasp with the long legs that dangle as she flies. The other looks like a huge yellow jacket, which are nasty any time of year, and those are the German yellow jackets that can get into the house and a sting from 4 of them can kill an adult, and then there are the other wasps/ hornet that have the opposite markings of the German yellow jackets. I don’t like wasps because they can continue to sting you over and over and over and they don’t die, they just keep stinging. So far I have been very lucky and not been stung- came close to it and was able to bat them away to the ground then crunched them (they still twitch you know, even when smashed- )Last year the black hornets got behind the shutters and it was like, ok, get the spray that goes 20 feet. (ahem…it actually goes about 10 feet, which does not give you enough time to get away…) So, I am sitting in my car with the window down early in the morning. And this stuff say “KILLS ON CONTACT”(snort)Nuh huh. I don’t know who they think they are fooling but the only reason why these things drop is because they have wet wings and they shake it off and they are pissed and they want to know who woke them up. Of COURSE they say, DO NOT STAND UNDER NEST…It took three cans of the stuff to get them to decide they didn’t like being awakened early by foamy stuff being dumped on them for them to move the nest to my neighbors car engine that he was working on. The battle goes on out in my rose garden. Slugs. I know people eat snails, and the slug might be something that people eat in other countries, but- ewww… anyway, I have had a number of suggestions like beer in dishes but you have to have that flush with the ground, and it draws them… Grubs that moles eat. Well, they are welcome to them. Moles actually do you a favor, because it’s the grubs that rip up the yard, not the moles. You get rid of the grubs, you get rid of the moles. Glue boards work on moles as well. Some how a mole got into my house. Was making breakfast and saw something run along the wall into where the ferret cage was, and then disappear. Popped down the glue board and went to work, and it was caught by the time I came home. Its death did upset my ferrets, as I have been informed that they scream when they are in pain. Glue boards work for mice too. There are two types of mice, the brown field mice, and the black house mouse. The black house mouse is smart, and can get the bait off of the trap with out setting it off. They have no defense against the glue boards though.Anyway. Due to the influx of creepy crawlers, I bang my shoes before I put them on. Yeah, sometimes there is something in them. Most often a spider. ( I don’t even want to think about a spider with athletes foot… My sis thought me to be silly as she saw me do it at her house the other day. (my sis , the one who lives in the small scale home Martha Stewart would love to own…) We always take our shoes off in her home- something about the hardwood floors etc.. (snort) I am banging the one and she said “Why are you doing that?” and I say “Habit..” and she said “Why??” and I banged the other one and this – huge German variety runs out of my shoe across the floor towards where my sister is standing. WHAP!! WHAP WHAP went my shoe. My sis looked at me puzzled. “What was that I have seen a few of them- where did it come from??” “Uh…well, tell your exterminators they need to put down Boric acid…” I see her brow furrow. She is a smart girl. She has an associate for being a dental hygienist, but hasn’t done that since getting married and working with my brother in law designing interiors of homes. Her next question made me laugh. “But how do you know that?” she says as she calmly scoops it up in a napkin to be flushed. (sigh)“Ask your brother JK.” She carries the remains to where our brother is. He looks in the napkin. He looks at her. His mouth twitches. He has heard the WHAP WHAP WHAP. He looks at me. He looks back to our sis. We dearly love her. She could be blond you know. He takes her aside. He tells her what she is holding in the napkin.She drops it and screams.Ah the eco system…