General Chat

Sylvia
I do carry my epi pens with me, just pray I never need them.

Sylvia

better to be safe, and carry an epi pen with you all the time

Well I am sure the wasp OH found was a queen, it was huge and I would rather it be dead than me. I do not like to kill anything but I have been stung twice and go into anaphylactic shock and believe me its awful. It gets worse each time a person is stung so I do not fancy a third one. I thought with it being winter I was safe for a few month.
Sylvia

Pleased as I am to see that the New Forest has enlisted another species to discourage grockles Sylvie is correct the pain score of a wood ant is maybe 2 yards whereas the fire ant goes the whole nine yards. They are agressive, quick on their pins and can really ruin your day or worse.

I wonder if another New Forest pest, the lycra clad cyclist, could be introduced to the wood ant? A terrific match.

The Daily Mail alleges that the fire ant has made it to the British Isles but more reliably the Independent corroborates this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/super-ants-with-deadly-attraction-to-electricity-escape-from-gloucestershire-and-head-for-london-9627259.html. Can they handle ice, snow, Boris Johnson ?

Ants may be the next dominant species if they are not already. What they can't sting the termite variation will eat. Where can you get an echidna ?

I have had paper wasp nests in my (now dilapidated) shed, have admired their construction and left them.
I like hornets, they are less likely to sting than wasps, and seeing loads of them drunk on over ripe figs outside a pub in the New Forest wash hilarious!

Wood ants can almost (but not quite) rival fire ants in bite, as a woman we found - yet again in the New Forest can testify.
Feeling a little weary from her walk, she found a perfect place to rest - a mound.
The mound was the habitat of the Wood Ant. Not too happy with their abode being used as a resting place, the ants came out and bit!!

I've had one bite from a wood ant - nowhere near his habitat, just a roaming b*stard who bit me - it was very painful - like intensified sunburn (which I initially thought it was - then realise it couldn't be as it was under my jeans), then the perpetrator of my pain emerged.

What this woman suffered, I can't imagine. Driver and I took them to the nearest road and called for an ambulance.

I believe, though a sanitation inventor, Thomas Crapper, did not actually invent the flushing toilet, but fared better as a manufacturer of flushing toilets.

We certainly do have paper wasps in France though I have never heard of them in England. They are quite handsome.

So long as they are left to their own devices they are not a problem but can get quite bolshy if they think they are under attack. The sting is way worse then the typical guepe or even a frelon and can even be fatal. For that reason the nests are removed if they pose danger eg near a school. They are not a universal problem and removing them from the eco system altogether is bad news.

It was not myself who called in the exterminators to the hornets it was my O.H.!

If everything that moves or can be eaten and that some people were susceptible to were removed then life would be even duller than it is already in this Age of the ElfNSafety. As many of these problems are allegedly genetic it makes one wonder how they persisted for so many generations. Maybe Darwin has it wrong ?

Who though is going to call it for the cockroaches rah rah rah. Who?

Sylvie is right about fire ants though they are feisty and have a bite from hell. Maybe we could put them in barrel bombs and drop them on ISL. They are far more fearsome than an F16.

Thomas Crapper was born in Yorkshire in 1836. He was an inventor. His inventions took longer to catch on than I thought.
:-D

Sylvia, I don't get fire ants, but when I find ordinary black ants eating my skirting board............... :-| :-| :-| :-| :-|


Prickly - :-D - context and situation!!!!

In October, whilst lowering a marquee that had been up all Summer, I realised many ladybirds and earwigs had decided to hibernate in awkward corners. I really dislike earwigs, but realised I hadn't seen many this year.
I carefully collected both ladybirds and earwigs, and the odd 'false widow' spider, and found them holes in trees to hibernate.

The person who was actually due to take down the marquee was told about the ladybirds.
Their response was 'I hope the ladybird police aren't about'

That's why me and my sister (both ladies over a 'certain' age - whatever that my be) took it down.

Rollo.......Wasps are harmless??

What a load of old tosh!!

Wasp venom can be life threatening to certain susceptible individuals who are allergic. There are deaths each year from wasp attacks.

Google and educate yourself!

I wage war on ants in my kitchen .................. and fire ants anywhere in my "domain".

The pain from the bite or sting of a fire ant is beyond belief.

I also wage war on flies, bluebottles and wasps in the house, and wasps making their paper nests around the outside of the house.

Do you have paper wasps in the UK??

They make the most beautiful nests by scraping the surface of wood structures, chewing it up then pasting it together. BUT they also get angry very quickly ............. just walking by the nest when they are active can mean an attack.

The nests and wasps have to be destroyed ............ professional pest controllers basically aim a flame thrower at them and burn them up. Which is great except they of course do it in full daylight when the wasps are active, so you have lots of angry wasps buzzing around when they discover their home has gone.

Homeowners usually wait until after dark, then spray into the nest with a commercial Wasp Killer Spray. Then (and this usually takes 2 people), the nest is knocked down into a black garbage bag, much more Wasp Killer sprayed in there, the neck of the bag twisted shut and left until the next day.

If done carefully, the result will be a beautiful but empty nest that kiddo can take to school to show off to other kids and teachers :-)

So, Rollo, killing beasties is okay in context - not something carried out by 'females (mostly) over a certain age'? Or is the killing of wildlife okay if men do it - they do it for a 'reason', women do it through 'hysteria'.

When we lived in a caravan in Lossiemouth, the 'toilet' was a bucket in a shed.
One year, hornets took up residence, above the door. The nest, over the summer became HUGE.
Dad gave us this advice:
'Don't move suddenly, and don't make too much noise, and they won't bother you'.
He was right.
...and our 'business' was speeded up too!! :-0

Last year, we, as a family (about 20 of us, including 8 children), were the only residents on a (yet unopened) campsite.
There was a wasps nest on a building between the tents and the kitchen.
We just told the children not to play football near it.

The campsite was opened, a month or so later, and a cub pack stayed there.
The wasps nest was destroyed by the leader, as it (apparently) posed a danger to the children.

Having been eaten alive by various creatures all over the Middle East and SE Asia not to forget New York City when I was young I have tried really hard to work out the place of the wildly successful cockroach species. It is in evil company along with other such delightful fauna as fleas, lice, bed bugs ... you get the idea. Maybe David Attenborough can answer the question but I am not inclined to grant them living room.

Scorpions are quite entertaining and not a problem so long as you remember the usual rules such as looking inside a shoe before putting it on.

I used to own a large thatched house in the New Forest near Burley. The thatch needed replacing and as I was not in a hurry to fork out did not investigate it very much, sort of shabby chic roof. In the end one of the ceilings collapsed tipping a nest of HORNETS !!! from the thatched roof into the sunken bath. This caused great excitement to my then OH and the kids who had quite opposite view of the temporary loss of the bath the kids being basically in favour. Quite a few escaped but the others took it on the chin from the pest control officer. The upshot was I had to fork out for the new thatch and a second bathroom which took a right bite out of my bonus. Personally I would have left the hornets to sort things out for themselves over a few days but some people get very het up about things that can sting.

In Upper Holloway we have noticed one effect of global warming is that the horrid cockroach and seriously biting mozzie seem to have become permanently resident in London. The roaches are not the grand three inch razorbots of Baghdad and Dubai but rather small dark scuttly things which disappear in a flash at any sign of light. I have even tried a flame thrower but nothing seems to give a permanent fix.

The wild rat population of London is said to exceed homo sapiens so if anybody needs a new pet there is no lack of opportunity. I can see that the rats do the job of fast food restaurant waste disposal far better than Islington Council and make far less mess than the picky Freddy Fox. OTOH they are not a creature I would care to share with.

Ashes to ashes.

So when we are in France the assorted hangers on even the slugs (limaces) don't seem so bad.

Smooth snakes are a highly protected species in the UK. It is illegal to kill them , move them, keep them as pets or muck about with their habitat. Sorting out new habitat has often caused much delay and expense for building projects. Fines range up to £ 5 K with the possibility of prison. Not reporting criminal activity is also a criminal offence.

We have a lot of semi-tame foxes around here. For some reason they seem to like my garden to drag the detritus left laying about (fast food leftovers etc.) and spread it all around. Any that are caught by pest controllers seem to end up on the local shoot, where, having no fear of humans, the gamekeeper has no trouble shooting them.

It really is a case of context, isn't it?
I have happily put down mice and rat traps, even attacked a rat in our 'lean-to'.
Yet have had a pet mouse.

On a school trip to London, my eldest found a baby rat on the underground.
She picked it up, put it in her bag, brought it home, and kept it in a hamster cage hidden in her bedroom, taking up food for her whenever she could.
After a few days, her sister realised it was there, and told me.

That rat (called Milly) was the most delightful creature :-D
She was incredibly intelligent (as rats are), loved a cuddle, and was very clean.
Milly never grew to huge proportions, and lived with us for four years. She even got on well with our (rodent killing) cats - who, once an animal, be it rodent or bird, had been handled by us, was left alone.

When Milly died, both my girls wanted another rat, so they both got a 'fancy' rat each - unfortunately 2 males.
They were in no way as charming as Milly.
They grew to an enormous size, and were fat as well, despite having a limited diet, wouldn't be toilet trained, and were, generally quite anti-social, and, dare I say, thick.
Being 'Fancy' rats, they had possibly suffered the fate of many 'pure breeds'/'limited editions', and been too far in-bred, hence the over-growth and general lack of brain cells!!

:-D :-D :-D

I wanted to buy my grandson a Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroach for his birthday in December.

My daughter said NO! :-|

I pointed out that one couldn't breed. Still she said no.

....but if they were 'normal' ones breeding in my kitchen........

Rollo, everything you've mentioned we have had in our gardens but we've also had snakes, squirrels, possums and an otter (much to everyone's delight).

I'm happy to co-exist with most creatures and, like some of these correspondents, I'm glad to provide ideal habitats for most of them but I've just thought of another critter that gives me the heebie jeebies - the cockroach. Ugh! I know they're probably the world's great survivors but I could not bring myself to pick one up in the same way I do with worms and such like.

I've got log piles everywhere. They've been there for at least 2 years.
Goodness knows what's hibernating in them - fortunately the wasps haven't been in the attic for about 3 years, so I suppose they could be in the log piles.

*memo to self* MUST get the chain saw out this Easter and chop the logs up.
They're only there because I was going to burn them on my fire!

I am none too happy about sharing my abode with hibernating queen wasps and persuade them to leave if I see them looking for a place to winter but, if I did find one, I would do my best to let her rest until spring if I could.

Those rats Desmond brought in had to be killed in the end but, really, they were not causing me much trouble, unlike mice who poop, pee and gnaw anywhere.

There are bug boxes in the garden for the queens to hibernate in but I don't think they bother. Ungrateful little buzzers!

Another confession to wildlife I've killed/deterred on a regular basis.
Should I be ashamed to admit that I regularly put flea/tick deterrent/killer on my cats???

Surely these amazing survivors should be allowed to live - even at the expense of the cats' health and wellbeing.

I'm not too happy about killing wildlife.
I didn't bother about the wasps nest in my shed.
I never kill spiders in the house.
I have bot hedgehogs and sloworms in my garden.
Not bothered about mice etc in the garden, but I DO draw the line at potentially dangerous wildlife living in my house!!!

The wasps in my attic moved downstairs at one point.
I went to try on a long forgotten dress, that had hung in my wardrobe for a couple of years.
Fortunately, it was inside out.
As I turned it the right way around, I heard a low buzz.
All down the sleeve seams were hibernating queen wasps!!!

What should I have done? Left them?
No doubt Rollo would say yes - because he hasn't been in that situation!!

THIS was when the war on the ones in the attic began!!

Oh, and I'm sure I wasn't, at that time, a 'female ( mostly ) over a certain age', I was in my early 30's with 2 small children's safety and health to consider! Unless, of course, that 'certain' age is something like 10.

As for females being the purveyors of death to wildlife, I suppose it's okay for my neighbours (for 'neighbours', I mean the husband) to cover his garden with tarpaulin for 18 months, then destroy the sloworms he finds.
To replace any vestige of greenery with decking, breezeblocks and pebbles, then send a 'landscape gardener' to my door last winter to 'get rid of those trees', and remove that unsightly mound of branches (that he couldn't see) behind those trees - where, as I informed this alleged 'gardener' hedgehogs were hibernating.

As you feel it's okay to hype up some imaginary stereotype, Rollo, might I suggest that you would, like my neighbour, feel my garden was 'a mess', and I should clear up the leaves from under the shrubs, hack down the leylandii (that I didn't plant), even if it meant disturbing the hedgehogs, remove the spider's webs that cross my path - and, as for the very leaky shed that's now at an amazing angle, and about to fall down - remove it immediately, even though I know both hedgehogs and sloworms are underneath it - and possibly mice inside it.!

So, don't bother 'sounding off' without knowing the facts - we can all bluster into the wind in an attempt to sound superior.

Edit: If the shed DOES fall down, no creatures under it will be harmed, as it's on good struts, but as I can't replace it at the moment, I can't see the point in removing it.