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I think living here you just learn the things to avoid ( blackberry vines , ect) You don't stick your hands into a woodpile or weeded area without checking it out first.
My boys played in the woods their entire childhood. No snake bites, a few chiggers & a few ticks ..
If I moved to NYC I would have to learn how to stay safe in the city, what neighborhoods to avoid.
It's the same..
I think living here you just learn the things to avoid ( blackberry vines , ect) You don't stick your hands into a woodpile or weeded area without checking it out first.
My boys played in the woods their entire childhood. No snake bites, a few chiggers & a few ticks ..
If I moved to NYC I would have to learn how to stay safe in the city, what neighborhoods to avoid.
It's the same..
Is there something special about blackberry vines?
Is there something special about blackberry vines?
They're blackberry bushes...and it was a big deal to have a patch of them growing on your property...a big deal in a good way. Nothing like a big dollop of homemade blackberry cobbler after a supper of fresh homegrown vegetables in the summer.
Is there something special about blackberry vines?
We always got covered in chiggers when we went blackberry picking as kids.. Probably because they
grow wild and we were in tall weeds & grasses to find them..
Speaking of blackberries..when are they ripe?? Soon I hope..
Oh, the irony. I can't keep the wild blackberry vines out of my yard here in the PNW. lol They grow like gangbusters and are considered a 'weed' to most in our area!
Near as I can tell, blackberry bushes are the native habitat of the American Chigger. I got the worst infestation of my life while trying to pick blackberries. So I guess whether you indulge or not depends on how much you like blackberries. And chiggers.
This has been a pretty handy education in Chiggers and other nasties.
If it were just me, I probably wouldn't give much concern to this issue. I think that as long as you're aware of your surroundings and all, you should be fine. I'm not totally in love with not being able to play around outside with reckless abandon, but you take the bad with the good.
I am, however, concerned about my wife, since she's extremely sensitive, has bad allergies, and gets chronic hives.(which is very rare) Anything that possibly can happen from a tick/chigger/snake/whatever bite probably will happen with her. Anything can aggrevate her hives from heat to bug bites to stress. She's already in a chronic state of itchy/rashy hell, so I don't want to risk making it worse.
That said, we've been taking this upcoming move very seriously, and have tried time and again to find a better place for us than North Carolina, and we keep coming back to NC. We've come to terms with the hot summers since on the whole it can't even compare to where we live now in South Florida. That just leaves this last issue of "Can we as Northerners adjust to this and be okay with it for the rest of our lives?"
I suppose it's important to ask: are the worst critters that NC has significantly less active in the cooler seasons?
"I suppose it's important to ask: are the worst critters that NC has significantly less active in the cooler seasons?"
Yes, very much less active to inactive. Personally, I find that in the Piedmont from late October to March, one doesn't need to worry about snakes or other sorts of creepy crawlies. Now perhaps if you lived down toward the southern NC coast...or southeast corner of the state, the window of inactivity is not as long.
Those maps are not hard/fast rules as to where snakes may live. I know for e a fact, that quite a few rattlers have been found around Falls Lake, in Wake County.
I can believe it.
Even the above range map for the timber rattler shows their population range touching the northwest corner of Wake County - and I think that most species range maps tend to err a bit on the conservative side.
I can absolutely believe there would be a few timber rattlers in some of the more untrammeled woods around Falls Lake.
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