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Our house is a pest magnet
14 years ago
We interrupt your normal FA experience for a bit of unimportant jibber-jabber ... So today we evicted two fascinating residents from our home. The first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_mouse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L.....se_mg_3263.jpg
And the second:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%.....h-horse_Beetle
http://s4.hubimg.com/u/1474419_f260.jpg
The little mouse was soooooo cute! Our dog Okami sniffed it out. It was in one of our boxes of games and toolboxes, nestled in the bottom as comfy as you please. We took the box outside and tipped it sideways, and the thing scuttled out into a small stand of grass near our fence. The thing nearly jumped out of the box once during the process, and this box was almost two feet high!
The second ex-resident we found crawling the carpet downstairs. I was really freaked out that it was a termite or some kind of wood-eating beetle, but
justawerewolf was adamant that it was too big to be either of those ... about an inch and a half! Finally we managed to identify it using an online insect identification guide, and we were very relieved to find out the thing does not eat wood at all. It preys on invertebrates like like, insect larva, slugs and snails. Whew! We caught it in a glass jar, took it outside, and released it into the front lawn. I hope it takes up residence in my box garden so it can defend my plants from garden pests!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_mouse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L.....se_mg_3263.jpg
And the second:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%.....h-horse_Beetle
http://s4.hubimg.com/u/1474419_f260.jpg
The little mouse was soooooo cute! Our dog Okami sniffed it out. It was in one of our boxes of games and toolboxes, nestled in the bottom as comfy as you please. We took the box outside and tipped it sideways, and the thing scuttled out into a small stand of grass near our fence. The thing nearly jumped out of the box once during the process, and this box was almost two feet high!
The second ex-resident we found crawling the carpet downstairs. I was really freaked out that it was a termite or some kind of wood-eating beetle, but
justawerewolf was adamant that it was too big to be either of those ... about an inch and a half! Finally we managed to identify it using an online insect identification guide, and we were very relieved to find out the thing does not eat wood at all. It preys on invertebrates like like, insect larva, slugs and snails. Whew! We caught it in a glass jar, took it outside, and released it into the front lawn. I hope it takes up residence in my box garden so it can defend my plants from garden pests!
It was way smaller than the mice in those pictures. It was about the size of a shrew, but it really looked like a mouse. TINY!
Word of the wise about centipede bites, I know in the northwest states they're not poisonous, but if one is found to have venom and you're bitten, submerge the bite in vinegar (white works best) and that will draw out the poison... I do believe this would also work for other poisonous insects as well, not sure about reptiles... This was a fun fact I learned in Hawaii by the locals while I lived there (once they stopped being prejudice about me being a "haole" xD)
Hanford?
no yer not...