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I need some guidance. I have NC in my mind as this VERY scary place to live with the poisonous spiders, snakes, ticks etc. Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill (no pun intended).
I have a 2 yr old and want her to have the best life possible so I don't want to move to an area of the country that makes her live in fear. I know I sound like a dork but I have lived in Maine all my life so this is new to me! Hope you can help!
well, most of the country has their share of poisonous spiders and snakes. If it is any help, I have been here 30 years, put myself in conditions where poisonous spiders hang out, crawlspaces, daily and have never been bit. Black Widows are the prevelant poisonous spider, but we have a few Brown Recluse as well. Alot of people go years without ever seeing Widows. This is a beautiful area and you shouldnt let that deter you from moving here.
I need some guidance. I have NC in my mind as this VERY scary place to live with the poisonous spiders, snakes, ticks etc. Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill (no pun intended).
I have a 2 yr old and want her to have the best life possible so I don't want to move to an area of the country that makes her live in fear. I know I sound like a dork but I have lived in Maine all my life so this is new to me! Hope you can help!
You are making a mountain out of a mole hill...really. You have just as many critters in Maine as we do down here.
It's North Carolina....not the middle of some swamp.
I think the no-see-ums and black scalp-biting flies I encountered camping in Maine were as scary as the ticks are here. Beautiful state, by the way... I've rented a cabin at Rangeley Lake several times...
Seriously- if you plan to live in a city here, you won't have too much to worry about, snake and bug-wise. However, if you move out to the country, you can expect to see your share of bugs and snakes. I pick ticks off me all the time out here in rural Orange County, and I've seen copperheads in my yard. Until I moved out to the country, though, I don't recall seeing anything particularly scary or creepy-crawly around my house.
If you plan to move to Cary, you may see snakes, but they are all beige or taupe. *runs merrily away from Cary-ites*
I'm a New Englander who recently moved to northeast Florida, so I fully understand your concerns cushingme about moving south of the Mason Dixon line. I know my tent and camping equipment will never see the light of day down here. BUT .... living with snakes, scorpions, spiders, gators, etc., is NOT what I expected at all. It's really no different than living with the Maine black bears and rattlesnakes. In the two months I've been here I've encountered one black racer snake (harmless) which disappeared quickly upon my approach, one water snake (not a cottonmouth, thus harmless) which wanted nothing to do with me and hid in the water's edge until I passed by, a few spiders but none different than in my house up north, one tiny scorpion that scared the bejeezes out of me until I jumped onto the 'net to do research and found it's harmless - it only stings you when threatened which is no different than a skunk which will spray you if you corner it.
The stories I've read about children being bitten or stung generally has to do with their curiosity to pick these critters up or get too close. In Maine you'd teach your child to stay away from critters -- it'll be no different in NC, just a different set of critters.
I've changed the way I do things a little bit. I wear gloves now when I garden (no big deal), I still walk barefoot in the backyard although I do look ahead more observantly (again, no big deal). Generally speaking, the critters want nothing to do with humans and will get out of the way.
I can recommend this -- get to know the critters by doing some research. I'm much more relaxed now having googled racers and scorpions and cockroaches, etc. and learning their behaviors and motivations. I think you might find that the Maine bears are more of a threat than the NC snakes.
Actually I've seen some of the biggest spiders NORTH of the mason-Dixon line. When I grew up in VA we used to go up to PA to camp a lot when I was in the boyscouts and I saw Black Widow spiders all the time. I slept in a platform tent that had HUGE wolf spiders all over the top of the tent. In the DC area where I grew up, black widows used to come into my parents house and we would have to trap them and take them out. I was never afraid, as this was a rare occurance.
Now since last June when I arrived in NC I have yet to see any BW's or BR's and only get a few tiny spiders from time to time that come into the house. It's not even something I think about. Spiders are everywhere and I saw as much in NY (growing up as a little kid) as I do in NC.
I wouldn't recommend walking around barefoot. My husband kneeled down on a hornet the other day, and last week when I was doing some stuff in the yard I saw both a hornet and a big bumblebee land in the grass near me, and neither were visible from above once they'd settled in.
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Beautiful state, by the way... I've rented a cabin at Rangeley Lake several times... 
