The vermin poll.

[rivka]

[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?

Comments

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I feel a bit more strongly about miller moths because I've had lots of trouble with them, and the GET IN THE FOOD. There's nothing like going to make your pasta for company dinner and finding it stringy with a web and completely disgusting. If someone was "eh, no big deal" I'd want to let them know that it is an issue they should try to address sooner than later, if possible, lest they also discover that all their cake mix has become a home to invertabrates.

[naomikritzer]

1. Mice: "Huh. I'll keep an eye out for a present from my mouser." The cat who kills mice has taken care of every mouse within 24 hours but once presented it to me still twitching.

2. Cockroaches in someone else's house: I would be shocked in Minneapolis, but this is a regional issue. My mother is an impeccable housekeeper but did not want to use poison when she had young kids, and when we lived in Houston, we had the Texan tree roaches despite her best efforts. (That said, a roach in a teacup served to a guest? ZOMG.)

3. Miller moths in someone else's house: Are these flour moths? I would warn them about the possibility of serious infestation (I had a massive pantry moth infestation one time) and suggest pheremone traps from www.bugspray.com. (If these aren't flour moths, I wouldn't even notice.)

4. The other vermin in my parents' house: wasps. We had wasps that would build nests behind our shutters, and despite my mother's aversion to poisonous sprays, I don't understand why they didn't take measures to get rid of them. I got wasps in my bedroom on a regular basis and was stung many, many times.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing about this poll to me is the distinction between "eh, no big deal" and "time to take pest-control measures". To me, the answer would usually be both; as in, it's no big deal to have to take pest-control measures, it's part of the regular upkeep of a dwelling unless you happen to live in an insanely lucky climate.

With regards to roaches; if you live in the south, you will have the occasional roach. Although this is not the way my gut reaction goes: if it's enormous, things are okay. An adult roach has wandered in somehow. If you start seeing little roaches, that's when you're fucked, because you've now got them living in your house and breeding.

And if you treat for roaches, of course, that's when they come out to die. Not that I wouldn't freak the hell out and all, but I could see that happening; especially if your housekeeping is good enough that you don't automatically check dishes as you take them out to make sure there's not crud on them, because your dishes can be assumed to be clean.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I chose "other" for my reaction to someone with mice or cockroaches because it wouldn't affect my overall judgment of them, or even them as housekeepers, but I do feel that in both cases (1) if you see one, there are probably many more, and (2) it's much easier to eliminate them when there are fewer, so (3) on a purely practical basis, acting earlier is much better than acting later. I'd give that as advice, but not judge them if they chose a different approach.

Come to think, we did have occasional roaches in North Carolina, but those were the huge southern flying roaches--scary and upsetting, but they bred outside, so it was more like a grasshopper wandering in (but yuckier) than an incipient infestation.

[timill]

When I find a mouse, I generally look for the cat that brought it in...

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

Next year, however, we should have moved to Tennessee...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Older houses (our house and most of our neighborhood date to 1850 +/-), you are going to have Things. Bats, wasps, squirrels, sometimes rats added to your poll ingredients.

One thing we don't have, "other" in the poll, is cockroaches. They don't live this far north, so we'd nab a specimen and hand it over to the Bug Guy who works with Wife's nature center.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Miller moths and flour moths do seem to be the same thing; they are also apparently called meal moths, pantry moths, and grain moths. We had an infestation in one of the group houses I lived in during college, and only after that did I realize why my mother freaked out so much when she saw one stray one in our family's kitchen.

It would be nice if we could keep a cat, but Michael and I both have allergies.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

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?

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

We don't have roaches, but we do have a lot of spiders and centipedes, especially in the basement where our bathroom is.

If something happens to the spiders we see a huge increase in flying bugs, so we tend to leave them alone. And the centipedes (which we only see very occasionally) keep the number of spiders from getting out of control.

[Edited to add] You know, housekeeping standards aside, I can't imagine how somebody can not notice there's a roach in a cup.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Ah. That's not what I thought miller moths were, I thought they were the kind that ate your clothes.

Please revise my reaction to ZOMG.

I haven't had these. I've had the other kind.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing about this poll to me is the distinction between "eh, no big deal" and "time to take pest-control measures". To me, the answer would usually be both; as in, it's no big deal to have to take pest-control measures, it's part of the regular upkeep of a dwelling unless you happen to live in an insanely lucky climate.

Well, for example: we occasionally see stray tiny little ants in the playroom, which opens up onto our garden. If there aren't a lot of them, and they don't seem to be going after something in particular, I just keep my eye out. I figure they wandered in from outside and will wander back out again, and that's usually what happens. That's how I feel about the occasional housefly too. I wouldn't rush out to get poison spray. But if I had ants in the pantry, or a housefly problem, then I would take steps.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

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.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I didn't even *think* to mention the spiders. Just part of life. Like you, we have a symbiotic relationship with them.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

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.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

That's funny, I didn't think to mention them either. But ours are very small.

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

Where I live now the only roaches I have EVER seen are my Giant Burrowing ones (Marcopanethsia sp) which live in a habitat on my dresser. Never had pantry moths down here, and its too cold for mice I suspect. Ants however seem to like my cupboards and I dont like them...so we wage war.
However when I lived in Brisbane we had big roaches on a semi regular basis - Periplantia sp, which are technically outside roaches, so dont make me go ick. GERMAN roaches however (Blattica germanica) make me squirm big time and go into hyper OCD cleaning mode if I see them - dunno why, something about them makes me squirm. And if I seem over knowing on the roach front my honours thesis was on the diversity of oxyurid parasites in cockroaches, so I spent a whole year, dissecting and identifing the little blighters.

In other ppls houses, roaches make me go ICK, if I see a mouse I will freak, but otherwise Eh.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

In my childhood home, we had mice, but we knew where they came from - two of my brother's pet mice had escaped and occasionally emerged to sit beneath the TV set and mock us.

We now (in Georgia, 1920s house) have both roaches and ants. Previously when I've had ants I would set out ant baits and that would solve the problem very quickly. Here the ants seem to laugh at ant baits. The roaches are the giant 2-inch variety. We've been told that if you treat for roaches, you get ants, and if you treat for ants, it does nothing to stop roaches. Since we had a negative experience with roach treatments at our old house (left poison debris everywhere despite being told we had small children) for now we're just dealing. I want to look into boric acid for the ants, as I am told it's non-toxic to humans and I think we've found where they are getting into the house.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Ours are not small. Some of the basement species go an inch or more across.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I very seldom see a live mouse, though I get the occasional half mouse left by one of the resident cats as a gift to the humans. When I have seen live mice, they've always been alive because the cats were still playing with them.

We get ants after a hard rain. They'll come up the wall and in the windows. We then engage in chemical warfare against them, and they go away until the next time there's a hard rain. Roaches have never been a problem out here, I suspect because we aren't tied into a public sewer system. We did have roaches that came up through the kitchen drain when we lived in Parkville, and I know they're a common problem in the Baltimore area. We used a lot of roach spray back then.

I have no idea about miller moths. The general rule with insects is that if we see them we spray.

When I was growing up the vermin varied with location. In Detroit we had mice once in a while. I don't recall ever seeing a live one, though my grandmother would throw out a dead one that got into a trap every few days. She kept a lot of mousetraps baited and distributed around the house. Ants were a seasonal problem, though they didn't get into the house all that often. I never saw a cockroach until we moved to Tucson, where they were all over the place. The much more serious issue in Tucson was the scorpions.

[timill]

(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...

[aendr.livejournal.com]

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.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i have no idea what miller moths are. mice need to be invited to leave. i have them in my garage and sometimes on my back porch (where i feed the dogs).

cockroaches need to be eradicated. through burning the house down, if necessary. and then moving. to alaska.

(there's a reason i live north of the hard frost line.)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

We have mice. Period. We live next to fields and lots of open space and I don't think we'll ever completely get rid of them. Mostly, we haven't done much about it yet (except change some of our food storage methods). But we are talking about getting a cat, and it will be a good incentive to do so.

My mother certainly thinks I'm more lackadaisical than I need to be, I think. But whatever. I'm not jazzed about lots of traps and stuff, so .... whatever. :)

We also have ants. When they start increasing in numbers, I just buy under package of ant traps and stick them under the furniture in the room in question. No big deal. Apparently ants were a problem for the last owners of our house too.

I've never lived in the south, so I've never had roaches. I have a strong reaction to the idea, but I think that's partly my unfamiliarity.

I think I was thinking that Miller moths were something else - the description above is icky.

**********************

When Elena gets older, we will definitely have to be strict about no food in your bedroom and that kind of thing. Because that would develop into disaster, I suspect.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

[Edited to add] You know, housekeeping standards aside, I can't imagine how somebody can not notice there's a roach in a cup.

Yeah, no kidding. To me, I can understand "roaches are a constant battle around here; we spray, we clean, and we keep all our food in sealed containers, but we still see 'em from time to time despite our valiant efforts." A roach in a teacup suggests a total indifference to the presence of insects. It's someone who isn't even trying to fight the battle anymore. The occasional roach skittering across the floor when the light is turned on wouldn't make me worry about the health and safety of someone's kids. A roach in my teacup would.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I had mice this spring (I learned about this by finding one curled up dead in the supplementary dog food bag). My response was: 1. OH HELL NO, and traps; 2. Do not buy more dog food than will fit in the plastic tub. The traps worked fine; I caught 3 mice and I haven't seen any more.

This was in the city, mind you. At the cottage we are resigned to finding mouse poop all over everything when we come up for the first time in the spring. We just clean everything and don't worry about it. They don't seem to hang around in the summer.

And I'm happy to say I've only had glancing encounters with cockroaches. YICK.

We will not speak of the occasional raccoon problems. ;)

I lived in Kenya as a child and in the rainy season we would be inundated with winged ants (termites). They would crawl into our house through any opening and shed their wings and it was vile, but there wasn't much you could do about it (well, sitting in the dark so they wouldn't come towards the light was helpful, but only a bit). It only lasted a couple of days.