Ask Lemmy

Where I live, there are American cockroaches. The good thing is that they don't nest in homes, so their presence isn't a commentary on your cleanliness. But they do wander into homes looking for food. And guys, they're huge! Like you can hear them crawling.

I asked the pest control guy if there was a way to be finally rid of them and he said "move".

I've had fruit flies before that must have come in on some produce, have to be on it to clear them, leave out any fruit/veg scraps and they come out (out being tossed in the trash/green bin too, anything open air). Drop of dish soap, water and vinegar in a high walled glass or jar is the way to do it, I used balsamic but malt or wine vinegar works too, just leave that out and it'll do its job.

My current place we jokingly call the spider house, have a bunch of house spiders around (cats love them) and a few orb-weavers, garden and wolf spiders outside, pretty much anything native isn't a threat to humans or cats, they do a great job of taking out any pests, rarely see flies inside these days. Spiders and centipedes I'll leave alone, they're beneficial to have around.

A few years ago we had a problem with teenage girls in the bathroom. Basically made it unusable for most of the day.

Glad to say they have now graduated college and the problem worked itself out.

Had a mouse issue. Found the hole where they were getting in. Couple of kill traps and blocking the hole with rodent repellent spray froam and they haven't been in the house since.

Old house. Mice are seasonal for us. We get one or two in the fall when they start looking for shelter for the winter, and again in the spring when they start exploring/multiplying. We used traps, Now that we have cats though, they mostly stay away or get caught.

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.

Thankfully, only ants have been the worst we’ve had so far. Liquid ant baits take care of them in the house, while mound killer granules take care of the ones outside. There’s the occasional tiny scorpion in the house every few weeks in the summer, while the bigger scorpions and spiders sometimes show up in the garage. They’re usually easy to kill because my garage is relatively empty, so it’s easy to chase them around.

three times:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Wasps nested in my walls. I sucked them out with a Vacuum then put in some insecticide.

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.

1. rats or mice (not sure which one is correct in english) - my father sealed the pipe they were coming from. not that serious (there weren't many rats) but it was pretty scary.

2. termites - replaced the old wooden door with another door. my house isn't made of wood so it wasn't very serious, but it was annoying.

3. wasps - thousands of them all bunched up in one spot in the garage, dealt with using smoke and fire. they hadn't made a nest yet as they'd appeared suddenly.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Rats. Killed two a night with traps. They'd keep coming.

Got a cat.

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 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.