rivka | The vermin poll.

[Poll #1243857]

What prompted this poll: we saw a mouse in our kitchen this weekend. Mice in our last house got a bit out of control, so we're being alert and taking immediate measures to try to get rid of this one. But although I know that mice can carry disease, I don't really freak out about them. They seem like a normal fact of household life to me. They're a pain, but they don't revolt me.

Then I remembered a post I saw once on mothering.com, which at the time I labeled one of the most unintentionally revealing posts I'd ever seen. It was someone posing a hypothetical situation in which Child Protective Services might make unfair negative judgments about a family: By the time the caseworker shows up Mom decides to be friendly because, of course, she has nothing to hide -- so she invites the worker in for a cup of tea. She pours the tea and they sit chatting ... a moment later the worker picks up her cup to see a roach floating in it.

Mom says, "I'm so sorry -- we've just treated for roaches, but you know how hard it is to get completely rid of them ..." The worker doesn't understand, she's always lived in newer homes: from her perspective, a roach is a sign of a filthy house ...

My first reaction to that post: My house is 168 years old, so I hardly think I'm biased. Serving someone tea in a cup that has a roach in it? Is, in fact, a sign of a filthy house. And if you think that's normal or understandable, there's something wrong with your housekeeping standards. My second reaction, though: Huh, probably there are people out there who would feel the same way about mouse droppings in the back of a kitchen cupboard, which to me is a sign of whoops-but-no-big-deal.

Your thoughts?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The others are mostly N/A, since I currently live in a rural part of the UK.

*blink* Really? Whoa. Any household pests that do become an issue, where you live?

When I lived in Britain, the things that were likely to be an issue were mice, ants, slugs, ordinary cloth-eating moths, and mogrags/slaters/woodlice.

I had a huge slug problem in my house in Lancaster. Nothing worked. I eventually just lived with the fact that I would get up every morning and the floor downstairs would be all over slime trails.

Slugs in the house? ZOMG. Really slugs? How big were they? Slugs in the U.S. can be three inches long. I am just trying to imagine... whoa. I think they'd have to lock me up somewhere padded.

Alex would be delighted to have woodlice, which we call pillbugs, as a household pest. She is extremely fond of the ones in our garden, and has declared herself to be their veterinarian.

Yes, really. And three inches long. I didn't often see them because they came in after dark, but the evidence was plain, and sometimes you'd catch them.

They came in under the doors.

Nothing worked. New doors didn't work, pellets didn't work, salt worked for about five minutes until it got damp. It was just horrible.

I once stepped, barefoot, on a garter snake on the kitchen floor and killed it.

Nothing else in my life will ever compare.

Okay, you win. That really is the most horrifying thing imaginable, saving perhaps the roach in the teacup for the Child Protection worker.

My father tells a story about the time his father brought home snails as a gourmet treat. They were in a little white cardboard box, which proved to be imperfectly sealed... as my grandmother discovered the next morning, when she opened the refrigerator and there were slime tracks across everything.

ZOMG HELP. I never thought there would be a pest I found more horrible than tree roaches.

My husband, then boyfriend, once went downstairs barefoot in the middle of the night... He squished a slug with his foot and spent AGES trying to get the slime off. The complaints!

Back when the doctor let me do water exercise, I put my watershoes out on the porch to dry overnight and then put them in my bag in the morning and put them on when I was changing in the disabled room. One day, I stuck my foot in and felt squishy slug. I looked and both shoes had squishy slugs. I got them out and washed the shoes in the sink, and when I got home, I ordered another pair of shoes. Then I could leave a pair to dry in the guest bathroom.

n Sydney we have all the above, and I am feeling rather too laidback about all of them, given the reactions in your poll and comments, Rivka. Slugs walk all over my house, and nothing can be done -- even pest controllers throw their hands up. They are harmless, though, and the kids are now quite calm about picking them up, throwing them outside for the chooks and washing their hands.

Sydney is famous for its cockroaches and there's no off-season, because winter is mild. It's really only a problem when you get an infestation of German ones -- I can coexist with the big native ones as long as they respect the time share. Mice are no big deal, as long as one is prepared to empty the traps. Rats, however, I get the pest controller in straight away.

The received wisdom here is that cockroaches are not evidence of a dirty house -- they can live on paper and skin flakes for years, so the cleanest house can support them. Just check the cups before you use them.

I don't understand the impulse to go for poison at the slightest provocation, when cleaning the counters, keeping food in airtight containers and washing the dishes often will do .. surely the poison has to be worse?

Oh, and I'm so glad that NBHHY, Rivka ;-)
Emma

I had slugs in my last place - they'd come in under the kitchen door. Which was a fairly new door that *looked* to be perfectly sealed, yet I'd frequently find slugs in the channel underneath... and on my kitchen floor.

Pantry moths are happier in somewhat warmer climates - definitely more in Oxfordshire than in North Wales.

(a) What Jo said. Though I've never had a slug problem.

(b) The only thing we've had pest control out for was a wasp nest in a wall of the bathroom.

We did find a moorhen on the annexe floor one day, but I don't think it came in under its own power, and it was dead by the time we found it. We suspect Jasper...

I've never lived outside the UK.

Growing up I have no recollection of any vermin in the house at all - we lived near the coast in the North West. (Hence not ticking any of those boxes in the poll). Our house was 60 years old.

We have occasionally had mites in the flour - here that's not a sign of bad housekeeping so much as getting a bad batch of flour.

I went to University in London. There you are apparently no more than a few feet from a rat at any given point (I never saw any, just Tube Mice - mice who live in the London Underground train system.) One year, we did have a cockroach problem (which freaks me out). That was an 150 year old house converted into flats. We were assiduous housekeepers, but the students living in the other flats weren't necessarily as good, and the cheap landlady refused to have the entire house done. We could only get our flat done, but not stairwells or other flats, so the roaches would just go to one of those areas meanwhile. Bear in mind that British roaches are small, and the Chinese roach traps we had (courtesy of our flatmate's Hong Kong based mother) were more than a match for them.

When living somewhere in suburbia, I have had an ant problem in the front garden which then found ingress to the house and kitchen; as the ants were living outside, treating the entry ways kept them at bay.

In my current house (12 years old, suburbia), I haven't had a problem, hence not filling in that part of the poll.

I have heard of the following problems/infestations occurring in the UK; fleas (usually due to pets), wasps nests, clothes moths, woodlice, mice (usually in more rural areas, single mice usually due to cat presents), ants, slugs, roaches, squirrels in the roof space, bedlice (the biting kind). They do seem to attack the older houses, especially the less well maintained ones where cheap landlords prevail in absentia.

In the UK, we've had fleas from the cats, and a few slug trails on the doormats. no problem. My 'other' response to the mice question was "You saw mice in the house? Where, can I look?"

In university in Toronto, every student house was crawling with roaches (c.f. 'cheap landlord' above). I had a friend who couldn't use the microwave oven in one, because turning it on would start a tidal wave. We just got used to it. But it also taught us kitchen cleanliness: you wouldn't leave food out overnight, you'd always seal up bags etc in the cupboards. Now, people in the UK think I am completely anal about kitchens... they have a different approach to that kind of thing here! maybe exactly because there are no vermin problems?

Highly likely that those who think you are anal have never experienced a vermin problem. It's much less than elsewhere, though non-zero.

The vermin poll.

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slugs, cockroaches, mice and rats

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