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Household pests

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Mudcat

Mudcat

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of the creeping, crawling variety.



I was starting to get some silverfish in my bathroom. It was getting so that pretty much every time I went for my middle-of-the-night pee, I would see at least one. Often there would be a grown one and, if you looked carefully, a couple of those tiny tiny babies.

So I set out to the store with the plan of buying some bug spray - maybe some really wicked shit. Raid is a name I remember well from my childhood. Kills fucking bugs fucking dead.

Well as it turns out, things have changed in the world of pesticides. There was no Raid or anything like it at the store. They just have a bunch of Earth friendly powders.

I guess that laws have changed. I know from a former girlfriend who had an issue with roaches that more deadly poisons can be obtained if you are determined, however all I had in front of me was these powders so I bought one.

Next step is guessing where to apply it. Because you basically just see the silverfish on the floor and you can't be sure where its journey began. But long-story-short, I took an educated guess - around the radiator - and I scooped out a bunch of the powder and dusted the area.

I was expecting either no results - because that former girlfriend had scoffed at the wimpiness of these modern bug powders - or just very gradual results at best - but since then (3 days ago) I have seen exactly one little baby silverfish. It was crawling around on top of a little pile of powder on top of the rad. I like to think it died a very earth-friendly death shortly thereafter.



Hopefully not jinxing myself but things are looking pretty good so far.
 
Silverfish and Firebrats - What are they?

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_pnotes/silver-argent/index-eng.php



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"House centipedes (top) are often mistakenly called silverfish. Real silverfish (bottom) are actually much smaller with far fewer legs. People tend to see any insects or other arthropods as pests when found within their house. And while silverfish can cause some damage to books and fabric neither silverfish nor house centipedes are transmitters of disease. In fact house centipedes are known predators of silverfish and are very beneficial to have around the house."

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MrMonkey
Plommer, we don't have them now but in my childhood home mom was always killing the critters! I believe they were silverfish, at least that's what my mother called them!
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I don't think I've ever seen a silverfish, but I see many house centipedes, my place has quite a few.

I only kill them when I see them and happen to be boiling water for coffee.
Dropping boiling water on them causes them to break apart into many writhing pieces.

Next time I kill one I may make a video.
 
We have the house centipedes in our apartment. Once you get used to all the legs, they aren't that bad of a house guest. We never kill or re-locate them... I have even rescued them from the sink on occasion. They seem to mind their own business.
 
Yes Plommer, when we killed a silverfish it was more or less just mush, no pieces, so I'm thinking mom was right it calling it a silverfish! Yes, a vid will clearly determine once and for all what we have!
 
I lived in one place with mice, was nasty. I learned about the organic mouse trap. Get a bucket, and line the inner top with peanut butter (peanut butter is like crack to those little foks). Build a staircase up to the top of the bucket with books. They go for the peanut butter and fall in. What I learned is depending on the texture of the bucket those foks will scale their way out of it. Put a few inches of water in it and you wake up to drowned mice. Not the most pleasant site but beats ripping pieces of them out of a traditional trap and not as nasty as taking fried ones out of an electric trap.
 
I am talking about silverfish.

I see a couple of those centipedes a year too - along with a few spiders that manage to get inside. I just mash those with some paper towel and dispose of them. They never have the vibe of an infestation. The silverfish were getting a little more worrisome.

I do a pretty good job of sweeping my balcony for spiders too. I learned that when you kill those spiders, they become dead and therefore never make it inside. I used to imagine that it was pointless to kill the outdoor balcony spiders because there would be a replacement within like 3 seconds. But no. Sometimes one will come along eventually but it is far from instant. A sweep every couple weeks is all that is required.

Killing them makes them dead.
 
I hate bugs, I've come across all kinds in the years that I have lived here, and I do not like a single one. I can still get raid in the stores here, but you have to make sure to get the right one or it really puts a damper on the effectiveness you are after.
 
I tell ya tho, it was kickass thing that girlfriend did about her cockroach situation that time. One thing you always hear as an apartment dweller is if you get roaches, you're screwed. You're stuck with them. And there are a lot of reasons that is usually true.

This girl was living in a pretty seedy building. Great big place with many riff raffy, unstable lummoxes for tenants, always coming and going. Lazy supers who had stopped caring. More than once I went there and would see dog shit in the inside lobby. People would let their dogs shit and just leave it. That was just the kind of place it was. No pride.

Then suddenly one day she starts seeing roaches in her place.

:fok:

But she was like, "No! This will not stand!"

She got some kind of hardening foam sealing shit and literally plugged every crevice that led into her apartment from outside. Every place where some plumbing came through a wall ---> sealed. In some spots the wall was just deteriorating because it was a crappy building ---> sealed. She affixed stripping on various edges and got plugs and stoppers for drains and whatnot. She isolated herself completely.

Then she went to the hardware store and apparently told the guy she didn't want the wimpy earth friendly pesticide on the shelf - she wanted some good healthy poison. And she got some of that.

And I guess she knew just how to use it because she lived there for many more months. All her neighbours had roaches but she had not a one.



Inspirational shit.
 
mrquincy
We have the house centipedes in our apartment. Once you get used to all the legs, they aren't that bad of a house guest. We never kill or re-locate them... I have even rescued them from the sink on occasion. They seem to mind their own business.
Click to expand...

agreed!

but as I share a house.... My wife always sees one of these fuckers crawling along the seem of the ceiling and wall about 10 mins after I fall asleep and she is still reading.

not only do I have to get out of bed and get something to kill it, then I got to clean it...

luckily we only get them in warm weather
 
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