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It depends what you consider "bad" and if you care about ALL bugs or just certain ones. Mosquitoes can be horrendous here most years. Fire ants have apparently made their way here but those are easily avoided. Roaches are the same here as most other places that I've lived. Spiders are the same here as elsewhere as well. I've seen just a few other kinds of bugs but to me, this area isn't "bad". I'm way more concerned with my allergies each year than with the bugs.
Southern bugs are well-mannered and hospitable; actually quite considerate as bugs go. Bless their little bug hearts.
Sometimes they can be a bit passive-aggressive, but that seems to be everywhere anymore.
If you meet a "bad" bug, it always raises the question of nature vs. nurture. Were they made that way, or did they have a bad bug childhood?
Now, these are bad bugs....
This is my 6th year here. Mosquitoes were worse in central MA. I think the drought make have interrupted their breeding cycle.
I never met fire ants of Black Widows in MA. Black Widows don't have super powers. Kill them with a shoe. It is bad to mistakenly stand on a fire ant mound.
My youth was spent in SoCal. Where I live in the piedmont of NC there is no unsurmountable bug problem. I live on a farm and nothing except the occasional tiny spider comes in the house. Outdoors in the evening there are a bunch of little things that bite, but sitting on the porch with a ceiling fan on takes care of that. There are fire ants all over the fields, but, they build obvious mounds and it is easy to avoid them. Ticks, on the other hand are all over in the fields and woods except for in the dead of winter, so you need to either apply strong chemicals to your clothes, or look yourself over carefully when you return from a hike.
Cities are something else, and Chapel Hill, with its transient student population, is no exception. There are pockets of bed bug outbreaks. They sound horrendous, so you would be well advised to keep that in mind if living in a rental or if buying used furniture or anything which may have been exposed.
Where I work in Downtown Raleigh, mosquitos are insane!! At our home in Clayton, we barely see them. Strange because in Raleigh I am outdoors in a city area with no water around. Here in Clayton, I am on several acres of wooded property including a stream. I've been to Florida during "lovebug" season, now those are some bad bugs I am glad we don't have here!
If you are bothered by cockroaches, ants, and other such teeny creatures, make sure wherever you live has some sort of pest control process on a regular basis.
Nearly everyone I know either has a regular service come in or does something themselves, like spray around the edge of their home, keep roach hotels under sinks, uses boric acid where the ants come in, use flea and tick potions on their animals... I would recommend keeping food in sealed containers.
Relatives in San Diego report similar efforts to keep bugs at bay.
It's not like we live in Bug Bayou. But without freezing winters to kill them off and few natural predators, the bugs multiply.
If you already have a bug phobia it may be a little rough for you in NC especially at first. Just be prepared that you're likely always going to see bugs, indoors and outdoors, and most of them won't do any worse than give you an itchy bite. I'm from the Northeast and we only really ever saw house spiders, bees, mosquitoes, and ants back home. In NC, you can expect to see spiders/Asian tiger mosquitoes/ants/unidentifiable beetles getting indoors during the spring through the fall. You'll see fire ant mounds all over the place outside, and you'll see crane flies/bees/'mud daubers' flying around. Expect to see the very large cockroaches indoors a few times a year. You can think of them more like crickets (which also make their way inside). These things wind up in apartments and McMansions alike, and it's important to note that they're not the same as the small roaches that infest houses (but those are in NC too of course). I see big squashed ones at the malls nearly every time I'm there, and dead ones inside the ceiling light fixtures at doctor's offices. Walking from my house to the mailbox I get bites from tiger mosquitoes and small yellow flealike things that I still can't identify. And this is in a yard we have treated monthly by a pest control company.
The bugs are here, they're all over the place, and you sort of get used to them I guess. There are a few different bugs you won't be used to from living in CA, and those might take some getting used to. I've found that I'm very sensitive to most bites I get here and so are my kids, so I have a good relationship with benadryl and prescription steroid creams.
I'm sure the dorms have some sort of pest control going on, so you should be ok as long as you're not on the ground floor. In my experience, living on the ground floor of an apartment building was basically like leaving the door open and inviting bugs to crawl inside, but I've seen bugs on the top floor of an apartment building too. Most people here just ignore bugs unless they get a bite. Just avoid the black widows/brown recluses and fire ants!
Last edited by mizharlow; 03-31-2013 at 08:37 AM..
Where I work in Downtown Raleigh, mosquitos are insane!! At our home in Clayton, we barely see them. Strange because in Raleigh I am outdoors in a city area with no water around. Here in Clayton, I am on several acres of wooded property including a stream. I've been to Florida during "lovebug" season, now those are some bad bugs I am glad we don't have here!
That is very strange and completely opposite of my experience. I am never bothered by bugs downtown. Though bugs aren't that bad of a problem anywhere I have been in the Triangle, they are worse in the suburbs and near water.
Where do you work downtown? This is curious to me.
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