The insects we hate!

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Right now I HATE JAPANESE BEETLES!

They have demolished my white birch in my front yard and did quite a number on my purple plum in my back yard next to my pool!!!! We had such a bad infestation - I'm talking a gazillion beetles!!! You could hear them munching! Yuck, now I'm itchy!
 
I'm with you on the beetles. Each year I wage a running battle with the beetles wanting to get to my basil. They love basil. So far, the battle is about 90-10 their favor. Their grubs also account for the moles in my yard. I have spent hours and hundreds getting rid of them, and so far they are winning.
 
Right now I HATE JAPANESE BEETLES!

They have demolished my white birch in my front yard and did quite a number on my purple plum in my back yard next to my pool!!!! We had such a bad infestation - I'm talking a gazillion beetles!!! You could hear them munching! Yuck, now I'm itchy!

I feel the same way. Nasty critters. ugh.
 
I don't hate insects so much as I hate reptiles, especially house lizard or Hemidactylis frenatus.

Had to do some googling to figure out that Hemidactylis frenatus is a gecko. Gosh, Radhuni, we love our geckos. Usually several in sight, especially during the evening, and they keep to themselves, staying on the ceiling or upper walls, doing their job - eating bugs! We have an assortment of unusual and interesting bugs here in the tropics, including huge cockroaches. I don't mind any of them, unless (I agree with Goodweed here) they want to bite me. All bets are off then. This time of year, we have lots of mosquitos (who carry dengue fever), and little bitty bugs that bite your feet and legs, called jejenes. They are almost worse than mosquitoes. Bug repellent is a regular feature of our lives, as well as spraying the yard and patio regularly to get rid of ticks, fleas and scorpions. All this bugginess is really the only downside to living here.
 
I think I finally have an advantage, at the moment at least, on those dang beetles! I have a jar in the yard to where everytime I see one I enclose them inside and search for any leaves with eggs and also jar them. I have them sitting on my deck as a "This could happen to you!" warning. In the last week or so I have only seen about two! :glare:
 
I think I finally have an advantage, at the moment at least, on those dang beetles! I have a jar in the yard to where everytime I see one I enclose them inside and search for any leaves with eggs and also jar them. I have them sitting on my deck as a "This could happen to you!" warning. In the last week or so I have only seen about two! :glare:

Good job! I heard that a jar or bucket of soapy water will kill them. I know chlorine doesn't kill them because they were swimming in my pool:mad:! Unfortunately, we had so many in the front and back we had to resort to a harsh chemical - the next morning it looked like a battle field, piles of beetles all over the place! Unfortunately, my tomatoes and herbs were nearby. We covered them but the leaves are all turning so we will not be eating anything from the garden this year. It is amazing how fast these beetles can destroy! We have had two specialists come out to look at the problem - weird thing is we never had this problem in the past! We had the lawn treated for grubs last fall (topical and instant as we had bad grub damage) and again mid-June - systemic - to get rid of any beetles hatching eggs and eating. We will watch very closely this September because we were told we had so many beetles we may need a "boost". I just hope we didn't lose our white birch, they can be so tempermental!
 
Well being raised in Queens, NY, I wasnt subjected to many bugs, but boy did that change when I moved to Florida!! The ants here bite and not just once!! Ouch! Then there are the roaches that look like they are on steroids:ohmy: I dont remember what they are called but they are easily 2 inches long!! YUCK!! The no-see-ums and nats are a REAL nuisance. Sometimes the mosquitos get so bad that I cant even get in my car fast enough, I wind up with literally 10 of them buzzing around in my van:mad:Then theres the spiders, which I dont mind unless they are the black widows or brown recluses....
The ticks and fleas are harrassing my poor kitty:( The wasps here really scare me!! Im constantly "melting" their mud nests:LOL:
Other than that I dont have any complaints:ROFLMAO::wacko:
 
My mom was raised on Long Island and me in the Bronx.
I live in the middle of nowhere MN now but my mother will forever be a city person. My parents are in the twin cities.
She freaks out about bugs and mosquitos when she comes here and it really irritates me because she acts like I live in filth, and can't leave here fast enough.
She's a little OCD I think, she hoses herself w bugspray to walk to her garage at her house in the city.
Freak.
 
Well being raised in Queens, NY, I wasnt subjected to many bugs, but boy did that change when I moved to Florida!! The ants here bite and not just once!! Ouch! Then there are the roaches that look like they are on steroids:ohmy: I dont remember what they are called but they are easily 2 inches long!! YUCK!! The no-see-ums and nats are a REAL nuisance. Sometimes the mosquitos get so bad that I cant even get in my car fast enough, I wind up with literally 10 of them buzzing around in my van:mad:Then theres the spiders, which I dont mind unless they are the black widows or brown recluses....
The ticks and fleas are harrassing my poor kitty:( The wasps here really scare me!! Im constantly "melting" their mud nests:LOL:
Other than that I dont have any complaints:ROFLMAO::wacko:

Grant, 1 BIG DITTO!!!!!
 
I'm going to revive this thread to share with all of you the amazing insect we found in our yard yesterday, beneath a stack of bamboo. This guy is called a tailless whip scorpion. With legs and all, he is the size of A DINNER PLATE (note that he is on a 2" X 4" and his body is almost 4" long.) He is NOT venomous, and is actually considered good luck, because he eats scorpions. The two "arms" in front are like crab pincers. Isn't he a magnificent specimen?

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:):) I absolutely hate, hate scorpions and those big centipedes. We don't have them here but when I worked in Texas where they have a lot of them they totally creep me out. I found a scorpion on my purse which was on my bed I totally flipped I was cussing words that only come out of a sailers mouth out, it was about 2 1/2" long. I slept lightly with the lights on that night. The next few years after that I would put up a Mombasa mosquito net that tucks well under the mattress, slept well as long as I had the net.
 
I hate the grease ants (aka thief ants) that are infesting my house RIGHT NOW! I am heading straight to the ant trap store after work. Found em INSIDE my crisco and all over poor kitty's food. Yuk! Extra protein for him, I guess...
 
OMG Karen, living in Mexico sounded just perfectly perfect to me, UNTIL JUST NOW!!!!
That would have me running for the border!
 
The skeeters in our neighborhood are just terrible.
We can't sit on our deck after dark. Citronella candles don't do anything except give the darn things light so they can see where they're biting!
I installed two ceiling fans on the front porch that help keep them away.
 

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