Insects & Humidity (Ozark, Mansfield, Rea: scorpion, camping, organic)

[Aimsely1]

OMG LOL And they say NJ is a bad place! Anywhere the spiders are big enough to eat the large roaches well... yuck! The first time I went to Disney world and saw the lizards and armadillos I thought that was too much for me!

[kshe95girl]

And people wonder why I want to leave paradise, and go home to Mo, never saw a spider the size of my hand, fingers included, eating a roach the size of a Ritz cracker -shudder-

[firebll31]

By far, the most dangerous bug in Missouri is the FLU BUG. Get your flu shots everyone. And don't worry about the ones you can see.

[Aimsely1]

LOL thats funny but yes that bug is EVERYWHERE and yes, its the scariest!

[jdslady]

Originally Posted by firebll31

By far, the most dangerous bug in Missouri is the FLU BUG. Get your flu shots everyone. And don't worry about the ones you can see.

Boy ain't that the truth....... didn't get mine this year and yep, sure enough, both hubby and I bitten by that bug........ it was HORRIBLE

[kshe95girl]

Originally Posted by jdslady

Boy ain't that the truth....... didn't get mine this year and yep, sure enough, both hubby and I bitten by that bug........ it was HORRIBLE

Hope you and hubby feel better now, my hubby and daughter got flu shots, and both got sick! I was the only one that didnt, and have not been sick....yet......

[ucfjtm]

The only bugs that bother me here in Orlando are the massive (3-4" long) roaches that I thankfully rarely ever see in my house, and certain spiders. By certain, I'm referring to the brown and black widow problem that quite a few friends have seen the last couple years. There was an article in local news this summer about a nature trail (Econ I think) having quite a few wooden railings just smothered in brown widow webbing and egg sacs. We had a garage engulfed when brown widows came in a bred a couple years ago.. that made my skin crawl anytime I had to go in there even after fogging them dead and cleaning it out. Thankfully we were renting and that house is in the past. The wolf spiders and banana spiders don't bother me since they're large enough to see and aren't aggressive at all. The widows on the other hand.....

I hope I can make it up to St. Louis permanently within the next 5 years.. but bugs/wildlife have nothing to do with the decision.

[kshe95girl]

Originally Posted by ucfjtm

I hope I can make it up to St. Louis permanently within the next 5 years.. but bugs/wildlife have nothing to do with the decision.

I hope you can make it, too! Funny enough, i have even seen 2-legged insectoid critters running around Central Florida!

[SimplerTimez]

Originally Posted by kshe95girl

And people wonder why I want to leave paradise, and go home to Mo, never saw a spider the size of my hand, fingers included, eating a roach the size of a Ritz cracker -shudder-

As a Florida native, growing up in rural Florida wayyy back in the day (when I-4 expansion was still a twinkle in the engineers eyes...), I can attest to the large number of critters around there. We lived between two orange groves, right beside the irrigation canal. Oh mercy, that was THE critteriest place I've ever lived - snakes, scorpions, lizards and flying palmetto bugs in the house. Snakes would sun on the dryer in the laundry room/pantry, baby rattlers would be there curled up in the shower when you least expected them (I did some streaking as an 8 year-old once due to that situation...lol). And the wolf spiders were humongous, although I'm not sure if it was because I was a kid that they looked so HUGE or not. My grandparents lived in a mobile home on about 2 acres, between a grove and a dairy, under lots of hickory trees. We'd pull back the sheets to go to bed and VOILA! Mr. Wolf spider all snuggled up in there. And I slept on the floor on 'pallets' as we called them, in those houses. I was the only girl, and it was a great form of entertainment to my Grampy and my uncles to scare me with the wildlife and tell me what a sissy I was :/

It took me quite some time to outgrow my bug-a-phobia - I never really feared snakes as my dad caught them and sold them to the Ross Allen Reptile Institute, so he'd give me little ringneck snakes to play with. Only the black racers were aggressive; most of the others just hated being disturbed and were glad if you just left them alone to mosey on off to another location.

Bobcats and 'coons were frequent raiders of our chicken coop, but never threatened people at all. In fact, my dad found two baby coons and kept them on long chains in the big oak tree in our back yard. Not the wisest move, as they never grew tame and spent a great deal of their time hissing at me from up above my tire swing...haha. I think the scariest thing I ever saw was a 6 or 7 foot python that my uncle caught in one of the groves - it was long enough that it took three grown men to hold it out lengthwise. We figured it was someone's pet that got out, as pythons aren't exactly native to Florida that I know of

So after all of those hair-raising experiences as a kid, and a slow overcoming of fear through the years, I think I'm ready to live side by side with MO's wildlife. I'll just watch where I put my hands and feet in the wooded sections

~ST

[kshe95girl]

Originally Posted by SimplerTimez

As a Florida native, growing up in rural Florida wayyy back in the day (when I-4 expansion was still a twinkle in the engineers eyes...), I can attest to the large number of critters around there. We lived between two orange groves, right beside the irrigation canal. Oh mercy, that was THE critteriest place I've ever lived - snakes, scorpions, lizards and flying palmetto bugs in the house. Snakes would sun on the dryer in the laundry room/pantry, baby rattlers would be there curled up in the shower when you least expected them (I did some streaking as an 8 year-old once due to that situation...lol). And the wolf spiders were humongous, although I'm not sure if it was because I was a kid that they looked so HUGE or not. My grandparents lived in a mobile home on about 2 acres, between a grove and a dairy, under lots of hickory trees. We'd pull back the sheets to go to bed and VOILA! Mr. Wolf spider all snuggled up in there. And I slept on the floor on 'pallets' as we called them, in those houses. I was the only girl, and it was a great form of entertainment to my Grampy and my uncles to scare me with the wildlife and tell me what a sissy I was :/

It took me quite some time to outgrow my bug-a-phobia - I never really feared snakes as my dad caught them and sold them to the Ross Allen Reptile Institute, so he'd give me little ringneck snakes to play with. Only the black racers were aggressive; most of the others just hated being disturbed and were glad if you just left them alone to mosey on off to another location.

Bobcats and 'coons were frequent raiders of our chicken coop, but never threatened people at all. In fact, my dad found two baby coons and kept them on long chains in the big oak tree in our back yard. Not the wisest move, as they never grew tame and spent a great deal of their time hissing at me from up above my tire swing...haha. I think the scariest thing I ever saw was a 6 or 7 foot python that my uncle caught in one of the groves - it was long enough that it took three grown men to hold it out lengthwise. We figured it was someone's pet that got out, as pythons aren't exactly native to Florida that I know of

So after all of those hair-raising experiences as a kid, and a slow overcoming of fear through the years, I think I'm ready to live side by side with MO's wildlife. I'll just watch where I put my hands and feet in the wooded sections

~ST

Wow, what a great story! My hubby grew up in College Park, and used to play in a swamp behind the old Montgomery Wards, and tells similar stories....
When I was growing up, we had a summer house in Greenville, Mo, right by Black River. We would go out to play tennis in the mornings, and my mom would give us all a hoe to chop off the heads of the copperheads that would be curled up on the asphalt of the court -LOL-