No, I don't have lice.
It's love bug season in Florida, which means that if spend any time at all outside, the odds are very high that you will either see insects mating around you, or, if you are particularly lucky, they will mate on you.
They are EVERYWHERE.For reasons which I don't understand, my front door seems to serve as an unofficial insect love motel. Every morning, we wake up to find thousands of bugs on our doorstep, all of them dead.
We also find several hundred more in our house.
Yesterday, I found one in my two year-old's mouth. Tasty.
I'm sure there is a perfectly sound scientific reason for why love is coming to die at my doorstep (maybe love bugs are like salmon who swim upstream and then die after laying their eggs) but I'm not sure I want to know what that is, especially if it involves my house being some sort of mating ground for every kind of animal that gives me the creeps.
First the rats. Then the cobras. Now the bugs. Next the tarantulas and howler monkeys.
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Wow!
You are one privileged household!!
Maybe you're bug heaven?!
:-)
I seem to have that problem with flies. The nice part of that is that they are so interested in each other that it's real easy to sneak up on them with the swatter. Most of the time it's a two-fer...
Sandy
www.twelvemakesadozen.blogspot.com
Stink bugs, Pennsylvania is the home of the stink bugs, enough said...
Mom and Dad are having the same love bug problem as you. When they first moved into their house, they had to screen their back porch for that very reason. I think it's something to do with the coolness of the house compared to every where else. At least it only lasts a few weeks then will be gone... I'd rather deal with the stink bugs over them!!
Sorry about that... the comment from Sechakecha above is from me. I forgot I was on my google account!!
You just mentioned several (all buggy) reasons I choose to live in the Midwest. Winter is kind of a pain in the hiney, but it does kill a lot of crawly things. You could just embrace the bugs and sing "Love Shack" to them, or maybe dunk them in chocolate for the toddler?
I theorize they like the lighter colors (paint on houses). My grey house has none on the walls, but my neighbor has a toasted almond color and they are all over her walls. this too shall pass (in about a week).
Are those lovebugs? We had those all over our block and on our porch at my last house. They were disgusting
From the looks of it, your porch is white....Love bugs LOVE white!!! I don't know why...they just do.
Cobras? I must have missed that! Here we get ladybugs, massed on the sunny side of the house, sneaking into the house via the old windows, and leaving their little exoskeletons all over the playroom and laundry room...
Stink bugs here in Virginia too. They ate all the peaches off my tree this summer :( Now why did I think you lived in Virginia also? Hmmm....
I have that problem with ladybugs here in Nebraska! My front door is covered with them for weeks.
Ewwwwwwww
Our neighbor's have a ginormous wood pile that sits along our fence and is the home to many rats. The rats come into our yard to die. Sometimes Jon mows over them with the lawnmower and flattens them and then we get to scoop them up. That is fun!
I had never heard of love bugs until I moved from north Alabama to Mobile 13 years ago. HATE THEM. Freaky and they take forever to scrub off your car...ugh!
Oh man, I sure am glad we don't have this problem in California!
It's nice to know that my daughter is not the only one who likes to eat bugs. So gross!
Love bugs are the pits! Not to mention I'm not even sure they kill mosquitoes like they were bred to. I don't know if you've been warned or not, but be sure to wash your car often during the season or it will eat the paint off where they've been hit while driving. Good luck :)
Make sure you wash them off your car asap. They will stick forever and chip your paint if you don't. Did you know that they are an invention of University of Florida originally intended to eat mosquitoes?
well thank your lucky stars, all over our front door step is scorpions, and they scare me to death!
Gross. We are in the middle of love bug season too, here in GA. This is our first season here, and ... yuck... just yuck.
Wow, just from reading your blog I have no desire whatsoever to visit Florida! Well, except Miami :) Been there and loved it.
feel free to send a couple of cobras my way. i just discovered a mouse corpse in my office. clearly, the cat is fired.
also, i lived in florida when i was little (like 5 and 6), and i remember an abundance of snails in the driveway and caterpillars all around the outside of the house. not to mention the roaches. oh lord, the roaches.
We've had lovebugs in Louisiana and swarming termites + zillions of 2" cockroaches in Hawaii. The price you pay to live in Paradise!
We've had earwigs this year. I honestly don't see what purpose an earwig serves. Last year it was these little black beetles that if you touched them they curled up and fell off the wall and died. We called the live ones Paul and Ringo and the dead ones John and George. Until it's spiders, I can handle it.
I used to live in Florida, too. Love bugs really ARE a pain. I know you're not exaggerating when you say thousands! We used to have to sweep the porch everyday.
I used to feel bad killing them until my (nonreligious) mom told me "It's ok to kill them, Nicole. Man made love bugs, not God."
True that.
Now I'm up in PA dealing with the stinkbugs. I catch them in old baby food jars when they get in and my 5yo insists on keeping them as pets on his windowsill. They live for quite awhile locked in a jar with no air, food, or water.
I had Box Elder Eaters in an apartment I lived in once(Ohio).
They LOVED my son's closet, I would have to move his dresser every 2 days and vacuum them up. I was in college at the time and finally took one into the entomology professor to find out what it was. He told me to put dryer sheets or mothballs in the window sill and in the closet. They went away. They look very similar to Love Bugs, I would venture to say they are from the same family. I would try it on your porch, if you aren't in the middle of the monsoon season down there :) Also heard that dryer sheets help remove them from your car if you scrub the car with them, not sure about that one though.
For the lady with earwig problems, I had them in a house I moved into years ago, I couldn't sleep until I got rid of them, I had nightmares. I got rid of mine with boric acid, like within days I never seen them again for the 3 months I lived in that house. Boric acid may help with the love bugs too, just make sure the kids don't think it is sugar or something.
It's probably the black front door. Love bugs are attracted to white, red and black more than any other color. My whole house is white and we have a red front door so you should see my driveway and walkway. Or maybe you shouldn't because it's pretty disgusting. They'll be gone soon, only to come back again in the spring. They were made to control the mosquito problem but I think they spend more time mating than eating because we are swarming with mosquitos too.
The Sanford, FL Zoo, is very near you and they have Howler monkeys. I bet your kids would love to see them!
ew, that would give me nightmares like hitchcock's "the birds". i wanted to study bugs when i was a kid but that all changed after an epic camping trip where the prairie campsite was inundated with grasshoppers and moths trying to squeeze into any and every available orifice. makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. hope your 2 year old wasn't traumatized by the bug -in--mouth incident.
My hubby says Love bugs are attracted to Carbon Monoxide. Maybe you should get your house checked for a leak? If they are much worse at your house than other neighbors, I mean.
Also, Love Bugs are NOT genetically modified, or lab created. They are just regular God made insects.
I was going to mention the color of your house, but it looks like someone already did. My childhood house was close to the color of yours, perhaps a touch more yellow, and it was ALWAYS covered. Practically black from all the bugs though during love bug season!
I'm also in Florida, it's early September, and my front door is the same! They don't come into the house, but they do hover all around the outside of the door.
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