Ah, yes, my childhood summers at the beach. Not just fun and games, but also yellow fly bites that left welts (and usually on the ankle bone), mosquito bites, the appearance of freaky flying roaches, and horse flies. The rule for the cousins playing in the water was if you saw a horsefly you had to yell "Horsefly!" so everyone could dive under the water to temporarily escape it so it would fly off. Of course there were more false alarms than actual horseflies...I don't ever remember being stung by one (maybe once) but it became a weird game.

And they're not the frightend, scattering types either!

That's why you arm yourself!

I think the worst bug we have are those creepy cave crickets. or as i like to call them "alien crickets" because they remind me of the aliens in Aliens. *shudder* we had to exterminate our house for them because they were becoming more and more of a nuisance. of course now we have a spider issue because the crickets were eating the spiders.

a recent experience has forever traumatized me about killing spiders myself.

But those are eradicable, and not nearly the bother of some other insects I could name.

There are definitely more spiders here than anywhere else I lived.

ETA: I had cave crickets out the wazoo in my basement in MD. They can jump really really far. Occasionally they would make their way into the house proper and really freak me out.

It sounds like Seattle has more bugs than SF, but it has less than any of the east of the Mississippi places I've lived. Which puzzles me, now that I think of it, because there are spiders galore, way too many of them, and I can't figure what they're all eating.

I remember it was super cold the week of my b'day (aka next week) in 1986. Right before I left for college.

One of the droughts record it looks like we're fixing to pass was in 1986. I wonder if it was the same weather pattern.

"I stay inside!"

Smart girl. Palmetto bugs are not dumb, either. They started coming inside en masse once the weather hit 100. I have a pest control service, though, so I usually only see them on their backs, kicking feebly.

Yeah, cockroaches/palmetto bugs skeeve me way more than spiders - I kind of like the latter.

I kind of like the latter.

Color me shocked.

Hubby has convinced me that the arachnid population has its uses, especially vis a vis eating the mosquito population. He also understands my feelings and will take the larger ones out of the house when spotted. I have stopped shrieking like a mad three-year-old and can now just point and say, "That. Remove it, please."

Then there was the day Hubby said, as I was on the computer, "Don't move. Don't look down." Me, trying to be a grown-up about it, immediately looked down. Shiny, black, kind of built like a race car, rather than the blue-eyed wolfies that Hubby likes. "What's that?" I asked. "It's a black widow," he said, looking for something to scoop and hold with."

It's a whole different feeling, adding, "Potential high-speed trip to ER" to "OMG, nothing living needs more than four legs, get rid of it!"

Not even going to look at megan's whitefont.

That's why you arm yourself!

Did I ever tell y'all about the contraption I built to deal with water bugs (the giant flying roaches)?

We had one of these [link] and I attached one of Jon's work boots to one end with duct tape. I would adjust the handle so it was as long as possible without being unsturdy.

This way I could smite them from very very far away because of their aforementioned aggressiveness.