A few days ago I noticed we had some large house flies. Swat, swat, all gone. And then more, and more and more... Three days and at last count I've killed over a 100... :shock: The thing I don't understand is that we have a garbage disposal, so it's not like we have festering food sitting around in garbage cans or anything. Where are all these damn flies coming from?
Ha! I joked with the wife I was going to roll her over and check for sores. We haven't had our windows open or anything like that. The windows are just a few years old, solid seals. Sump pump has a lid with a silicone seal on it. I just can't imagine were 100+ flies have been finding sustenance. Somebody suggested yesterday that it's because we had such a mild winter, that bugs are just going to be bad this year.
This. My dad (lives in Glenwood, IA) complained that he seen his first mosquitoes back in late January, which is incredibly early. Supposedly, insects are going to be insanely plentiful this year due to the mild winter. I am actually spraying tomorrow for termites/ants under my home and at the base of my garage, in an attempt to fend them off. Also going to get my bug zapper set up and plugged in. ~Will Courtier~
There's a dead animal somewhere, like torx hinted at. One that was innoculated with magots and they've morphed into the adult blow-fly..
It was a little field mouse actually, and I have combed the whole house. No food out, no stinking trash cans, etc. The only thing I can figure is that the fruit I bought late last week had a batch of eggs in there somewhere. The flies are starting to peter out, just a few now, so I think I might have finally vanquished them.
I do think this may be the year of the bug though. thus far it's been the warmest (average) year in the first quarter on record. http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...t-march-and-first-three-months-of-a-year?lite I was out mowing the field yesaterday (third time this year) and there were lots of bugs swarming in clouds of bugs. About a month earlier than most years. It's been good for wild mushrooms too! lots of rain days mixed with warm days in between. I got to gorge on early morrels (verpa bohemica) a couple days ago. One thing I've been watching is the imported friuts/veggies from Mexico and S. America and the posibility of invasive bugs coming from them. You may have seen some of those first hand if the bugs did come from the produce.
Forget the fruits and veggies! It's the wooden palettes that have given us our worst foreign invaders, in the form of the Japanese Beetles, which are killing off sweetgums and fruit trees, as well as Formosan and Asian Termites. Also, tanker ballast holds have given us Zebra Mussels that are clogging up water intakes in places like the Great Lakes and Mississippi. We have Fire Ants and Killer Bees that will march northward as the climate changes, as will the traditional domestic pests that have largely stayed to the South for now. Then there are the foreign plants like Kudzu, which grows like... well... kudzu. Whatever. We'll just have to learn to deal with it, because it WILL happen. Modern transportation has made this inevitable, and no precaution is going to stop it, or even slow it significantly.
Yeah, for a while I was volunteering at the local nature center cutting down invasive species. Eventually I stopped because I saw how pointless it was. Bush honeysuckle is here to stay, you'd have to scorch the Earth from New York to Los Angeles for 7 years straight to get rid of entirely.
Here in VA we've had an inchworm infestation.. it's crazy. My neighborhood has mostly been spared but I was out in the boonies last week and they were EVERYWHERE. Looked like the ground was moving in some spots.
I was out doing some yard work this weekend and one of the trees here seems to have about a million gnats clouding around it. Gnats dont bother me so much as they stay outside all clumped together - but I think this summer im gonna throw some ziplock baggies with water up and see what happens. It sounds like the stupidest idea i've ever heard, but ive seen it so many places, and people swear by it. http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/flies.asp
Increasingly, though not an invasive, but rather indiginous species, the tent caterpillar has run amok around here. Every single deciduous tree from the valleys to the mountaintops were engulfed in tents.
doesnt work... think it was on mythbusters i hang one of these in the back corner of my yard to draw flies away, and kill them, it becomes really disgusting also hang fly paper things in my garage to catch the ones that wander in there, still have to change everything every couple weeks because my neighbors have shit factory horses...
So Wednesday AM update - no flies have been spotted in over 12 hours, fingers crossed they're finally gone. I'd feel better if I knew where they had all come from, total count exceeded 120... :shock:
Whitenose syndrome for bats, brown nose syndrome for people. Too bad the results weren't the same. We have way too many people with brown noses. :wink:
