Portland Area Summers - Pest Life? (Beaverton, Tigard: apartment, house, university)

[artandtechnology]

Hi all,

I've posted once before about places to live in western Oregon and received a lot of great feedback and information. My wife and I were hoping to take a trip up to OR last year, but weren't able to. It looks like we'll finally be able to get out to the Portland area this spring, however.

One minor thing that crossed my mind recently is what the weather and "insect/pest life" in summer is like in Portland and nearby surrounding areas (such as Beaverton, Tigard, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Tualatin).

Does it get really hot and muggy there in the summer? Are mosquitoes everywhere in the evenings and at night? Do spiders and giant centipedes (or worse) raid your walls every summer (we used to live near Lake Michigan and were whacking "hairy" centipedes as long as our shoes in our apartment all the time in summer and early fall, and mosquitoes were frequently bad on summer evenings).

We've become accustomed to hot, but dry summers over the last few years where we live now (which brings its own unwelcome wave of pests like hoards of Argentine ants, spiders and earwigs) but we haven't had to deal with mosquitoes or certain other types of pests for almost seven years. I realize Oregon might be very different in that regard given how densely forested and rainy (for much of the time) the Portland area seems, so I thought I'd ask on here just out of curiosity.

Thanks in advance for any info anyone can provide on this more obscure topic.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

The only things that bug ME are the spiders:

Spiders of Portland - Susan Masta - Portland State University

[hamellr]

No to all your questions.

[wanderbygrace]

I come from Ohio, where the state bird is the mosquito. Okay, perhaps not, but it sure seemed like it. Since moving to a SE PDX suburb last summer, the only thing I've really noticed are those small white lawn bugs (look like super tiny moths) and spiders. The spiders are sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, and at least where we live, very, very common. However, unless you're totally freaked out by them, they're usually not a big deal.

[SETabor]

There are mosquitos but nothing like in the midwest. Some yards have them more than others and I haven't ever noticed them while visiting around downtown.

[Rob Allen]

An acquaintance from Louisiana was preparing to move in to a house in Tillamook, Oregon, where her new husband was from. She assumed that they would need to have an exterminator come and eliminate the bugs before they could move in. That was standard operating procedure as far as she was concerned. Her husband told her to go sit in the grass in the yard for a while. She was skeptical, but she went and sat. Fifteen minutes later she came back to him with her eyes wide and said incredulously, "There are no bugs here!"

[hamellr]

Ironically, I just came across a 35MM slide in my father in law's collection. They lived in a house about a mile from my current place in the 1960s.

The picture is of a bee swarm on a small tree. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a bee swarm, and it certainly wasn't in the city or suburbs.

[Minervah]

The majority of bugs I see in the summer are spiders. Lots of spiders. But I like them.

[figmalt]

Lots of slugs too, which is a problem for gardening. Spiders and slugs.