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Becoming my Mother


Dirtyhip

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She always takes spiders back outside.  I remember her doing this when I was at my childhood home.  I used to often kill them.  I saw one on the floor today.  I said "Hey, little guy. Then, I used a piece of paper and took it outside.  

Not trying to paint myself saintly, as I am not.  What I do feel is that I have somewhat changed living here.  While that spider was relatively insignificant, it is a part of the ecosystem here on the property.  

:)

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Just now, Dirtyhip said:

She always takes spiders back outside.  I remember her doing this when I was at my childhood home.  I used to often kill them.  I saw one on the floor today.  I said "Hey, little guy. Then, I used a piece of paper and took it outside.  

Not trying to paint myself saintly, as I am not.  What I do feel is that I have somewhat changed living here.  While that spider was relatively insignificant, it is a part of the ecosystem here on the property.  

:)

I take all bugs outside - except some spiders get to stay.  I have one in my office area that seems to like living there. :D The few bugs that don't make the cut, though, would be ticks or fleas, and ants.  About once a year, we get an ant trail across the kitchen floor, so I wipe them out immediately :( and spray the toxic ant killer around their entry point.  Maybe I should be more proactive about spraying, so that only a few die needlessly.

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Just now, Razors Edge said:

I take all bugs outside - except some spiders get to stay.  I have one in my office area that seems to like living there. :D The few bugs that don't make the cut, though, would be ticks or fleas, and ants.  About once a year, we get an ant trail across the kitchen floor, so I wipe them out immediately :( and spray the toxic ant killer around their entry point.  Maybe I should be more proactive about spraying, so that only a few die needlessly.

I do kill ants.  I'm terrible.  ;)

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My Mother loved Charlotte's Web (she taught the primary grades and often read it to her classes).  Due to her love of that book, she always taught us to save spiders if we can, even though other bugs were fair game.  One day we went to hear her favorite author give a talk, and the author mentioned that she loved Charlotte's Web and to this day she won't kill a spider, so my Mom thought we were in good company.

I've been known to carry a spider down a flight of stairs to take it outside at work, even though my coworkers thought that was odd.

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6 minutes ago, Kirby said:

My Mother loved Charlotte's Web (she taught the primary grades and often read it to her classes).  Due to her love of that book, she always taught us to save spiders if we can, even though other bugs were fair game.  One day we went to hear her favorite author give a talk, and the author mentioned that she loved Charlotte's Web and to this day she won't kill a spider, so my Mom thought we were in good company.

I've been known to carry a spider down a flight of stairs to take it outside at work, even though my coworkers thought that was odd.

We have some of those box elder beetles.  I have been known to kill them.

I have a cart started with mason bees, praying mantis and lady beetles.  I want to accept delivery in May.  I am not sure about butterflies.  I think they eat gardens. 

Not sure who I am or what I am doing.  I am an enigma.  

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3 minutes ago, Dirtyhip said:

We have some of those box elder beetles.  I have been known to kill them.

I have a cart started with mason bees, praying mantis and lady beetles.  I want to accept delivery in May.  I am not sure about butterflies.  I think they eat gardens. 

Not sure who I am or what I am doing.  I am an enigma.  

We have some invasive bugs - I think lantern bugs are the big enemy now.  They are beautiful, but destructive.  We're supposed to stomp them on sight. :(  Sucks, but the destructive ones or the blood sucking or disease spreading ones have to go.

21354B02-F903-4E50-951C8D09B86FCF18_sour

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Just now, Razors Edge said:

We have some invasive bugs - I think lantern bugs are the big enemy now.  They are beautiful, but destructive.  We're supposed to stomp them on sight. :(  Sucks, but the destructive ones or the blood sucking or disease spreading ones have to go.

Haven't gotten a mosquito bite yet.  We do have midges, and I know there are ticks around, but I never see them.  I have crawled around through the bushes.  

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3 minutes ago, Dirtyhip said:

Haven't gotten a mosquito bite yet.  We do have midges, and I know there are ticks around, but I never see them.  I have crawled around through the bushes.  

Mosquitos and ticks, to me, are enemies #1 and #2.  Luckily, mosquitos are rare in the house - mostly camping annoyances - but my pup can attract ticks easily.

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We leave the back slider open for Jack so we do get a fair number of flying bugs in the house.  They get whacked…. 

I was just thinking that since the remodel where we removed nearly everything from the house and replaced floors & painted walls we really haven’t seen many spiders in the house.  Whatever was in the house got taken out during the remodel and a year later hasn’t returned.  

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Just now, ChrisL said:

We leave the back slider open for Jack so we do get a fair number of flying bugs in the house.  They get whacked…. 

I was just thinking that since the remodel where we removed nearly everything from the house and replaced floors & painted walls we really haven’t seen many spiders in the house.  Whatever was in the house got taken out during the remodel and a year later hasn’t returned.  

I used to see mice at the old 100 year old home.  None here, yet.

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Just now, Dirtyhip said:

I used to see mice at the old 100 year old home.  None here, yet.

We had a hole behind one of the kitchen cabinets that was in an outside wall.  We used to get mice in the kitchen but when we remodeled the kitchen several years ago I boarded up the hole  and haven’t seen a mouse in the house since. 

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2 minutes ago, ChrisL said:

We leave the back slider open for Jack so we do get a fair number of flying bugs in the house.  They get whacked…. 

I was just thinking that since the remodel where we removed nearly everything from the house and replaced floors & painted walls we really haven’t seen many spiders in the house.  Whatever was in the house got taken out during the remodel and a year later hasn’t returned.  

When we were in CA, the one thing we did worry about was some of the nasty spiders you have out there that can nest in the patio furniture.  We'd occasionally spot something like a black widow or other poisonous spider, and those would join the "kill" club :(  My wife always talked about them from growing up, and I was like she's exaggerating, but I think they actually are worse out there.

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Just now, Razors Edge said:

When we were in CA, the one thing we did worry about was some of the nasty spiders you have out there that can nest in the patio furniture.  We'd occasionally spot something like a black widow or other poisonous spider, and those would join the "kill" club :(  My wife always talked about them from growing up, and I was like she's exaggerating, but I think they actually are worse out there.

Yeah the weather is perfect for them.  Black widows & Brown Recluse spiders… I’m always really careful not to stick my hands in places I can’t see.  Like when picking up items in the yard I’ll kick them over to be sure there are no spiders under them as opposed to just picking them up. 

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My wife often calls me “Irene” (my moms name).  Two habits I got from my mom is making way too much food and I have an odd obsession of saving containers like take out containers.  

Ohh I can use this container! No Irene, you have a cabinet full, throw it away…. 😡

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FTR, I have a dedicated red Solo cup used for bug relocation. Normally it is in a kitchen cabinet, but right now it is on my nightstand as there was a stink bug flying around the other day and I was hoping to catch it.  It likely died :( as I never could track it down after seeing it high up in the bedroom.

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1 hour ago, Dirtyhip said:

She always takes spiders back outside.  I remember her doing this when I was at my childhood home.  I used to often kill them.  I saw one on the floor today.  I said "Hey, little guy. Then, I used a piece of paper and took it outside.  

Not trying to paint myself saintly, as I am not.  What I do feel is that I have somewhat changed living here.  While that spider was relatively insignificant, it is a part of the ecosystem here on the property.  

:)

You are so not your mother!

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12 hours ago, Dirtyhip said:

She always takes spiders back outside.  I remember her doing this when I was at my childhood home.  I used to often kill them.  I saw one on the floor today.  I said "Hey, little guy. Then, I used a piece of paper and took it outside.  

Not trying to paint myself saintly, as I am not.  What I do feel is that I have somewhat changed living here.  While that spider was relatively insignificant, it is a part of the ecosystem here on the property.  

:)

I leave those long-legged cellar spiders in my finished but mostly-storage basement along with their webs if they're out of the way.  The spiders don't bug me but kill the bugs that do!

Cellar Spider Identification & Habitat | Cellar Spiders in Portland OR

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1 hour ago, MickinMD said:

I leave those long-legged cellar spiders in my finished but mostly-storage basement along with their webs if they're out of the way.  The spiders don't bug me but kill the bugs that do!

Cellar Spider Identification & Habitat | Cellar Spiders in Portland OR

These are my favorite.  They can't even bite humans.

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12 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

When we were in CA, the one thing we did worry about was some of the nasty spiders you have out there that can nest in the patio furniture.  We'd occasionally spot something like a black widow or other poisonous spider, and those would join the "kill" club :(  My wife always talked about them from growing up, and I was like she's exaggerating, but I think they actually are worse out there.

 

12 hours ago, ChrisL said:

Yeah the weather is perfect for them.  Black widows & Brown Recluse spiders… I’m always really careful not to stick my hands in places I can’t see.  Like when picking up items in the yard I’ll kick them over to be sure there are no spiders under them as opposed to just picking them up. 

...when I first bought this house, I used to run into Black Widow spiders down in the crawl space, working on the plumbing.  But once the plumbing was more or less fixed, I told them they could stop hanging around, and I haven't seen any for years.  They're not very good at plumbing anyway, and I had to re-do a lot of the work myself.  I think they just can't get good leverage on a pipe wrench.

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