The worse the creature, the more it can defy gravity

[Patrick Degan]

The way I see it, if the ants you're facing aren't larger than you're house and you're not having to share a foxhole with Peter Graves or John Agar (or worse —Joan Collins) as a result, there's no real cause to complain.

[NecronLord]

It could be worse. You could be facing the European Ueber ants. They have a central colony a mile wide and are spread across France and Italy

As for Spiders. I for one don't kill them. Though they do get ejected once they're significantly over 1 inch in size.

[Chardok]

I am the biggest slob known to man. I leave pizza crusts out for days, I have three piles of clothes, Dirty, clean, and not-so-dirty-as-to-be-unwearable. anyway, my apartment had those little baby roaches (you know they type) EVERYWHERE! I also happen to live by a river, which BREEDS roaches, it seems. One day, after seeing one too many roaches scurry up my wall (This was just after I had moved in and had not properly slobified the place yet.) I grabbed the largest in between my thumb and forefinger and told him, "Look, Roach, I know you got some clout here, I see you on your little raiding parties into my cupboard and shit, and I've about had it. GIve me one good reason I shouldn't liqueify you RIGHT NOW" So the roach says to me, "Well, pitiful hunam, I happen to know that there are MICE in your ceiling RIGHT NOW. They come at night and they will destroy EVERYTIHNG. cheweing your precious electric cords, eating your PRECIOUS HONEY-NUT CHEERIOS!" "NO!" I exclaimed, "ANYTHING BUT THE CHEERIOS!"
"Oh yes," said he, "I happen to know the Cheerios are of special interest to them!" "If you let me live. we can rid you of the mice!"
Thinking carefully about it, (I had the upper hand, after all, I decided I was going to up the ante...for him anyway.) "Alright, here's the deal. You get rid of the mice, I don't care how you do it, murder rape, BREED them out, just get em away from my cheerios. AND. I don't wanna see you ever EVER again....you can come out at night, or while I'm at work, eat what food i drop, pick the trashcan clean, I'll make sure to leave a bit o' good stuff for you, don't worry. But here is the final stipulation, Any one of you I catch outside the agreedupon timeeframe, Daytime, or when I am here, or you get into my cheerios, the culprit dies, no trial, nothing just *Squish* and if it becomes a big enough problem; you ever heard of a house being bug bombed? If not, I will happily demonstrate. so you hold up your end, and you wont die. Deal?"
"Geez!" Exclaimed the roach, "That seems weighted heavily in YOUR fav-GACK!"
"Silence, bug," I said, "Be thankful I do not terminate our agreement now, It is well within my capabilities to deal with both YOU and the mice, I'm just too lazy. do we have a deal?"
"Yes."


The next day-
The next day I awoke to LEGIONS of roaches lined up 8-deep, there must have been THOUSANDS TENS of thousands! Armed with WICKED looking toothpick pikes, and bearing armor of discarded aluminum foil. "FORWARD MARCH!" The tiny commanders bellowed in unison, and the march was on! SCHLEP SCHLOP SCHLEP SCHLOP! Up the Wall! Into the bathroom and up into the crawlspace in the ceiling above my shower!

What followed for the next several hours was bedlam, absolutle bedlam, the screams of the dying and living mixed to form a sickening chorus of death. "I'M scared sarge!" "We're all scared son!"
"ATTACK!!!" DEATH TO MICE!! DOWN WITH ROACHES!! the pitched battle went from oneside of the celing to the other as mouse legion met with the wicked toothpick phalanx of the roach hordes. It went on like this most of the day and into the night.

The next day, all was quiet in the morning. From the crawlspace I heard a faint noise, upon investigation, I found it to be a mouse, head limply to the side as if the only survivor had come to conquer his domain. It was still moving, struggling to exit the battlefield, when suddenly, a BLOOD curdling scream as a roach JUMPED up onto the half-dead mouse and PLUNGED his toothpick Deep into it's neck! A cheer from thousands went up as the battle was FINALLY OVER!!!

The triumphant roach militias gingerly walked down the walls, broken toothpick pikes in hand, armor in tatters, some hauling friends on stratchers, some limping, all happy that the day was won. a few hours later, I was to find that the roach I struck the deal with was wounded in the battle and would be brought to me that night.
We was not in good shape. one of his antennae were missing, and two legs gone, he would recover, though, I was told. (Lotta commas on that!)
Anyway, with his visit the pact was sealed, for months I saw not ONE roach in my house. Oh, I knew they were there, but they stuck to their end of the bargain, eating only what I slovenly drop on the floor or the aforementioned pizza crusts, I would find the corpse of one here and there. and after awhile daytime encursions got a bit more frequent, but a summary execution later, and all was quiet again. So has it been in my apartment for 1.5 years. Roach living in harmony with human. a common symbiosis. No ants to worry about, no mice, rats, or spiders, just little roaches that leave me alone.


You guys may want to consider trying this out. You will find that most roaches really are quite reasonable! That's MY method of pest control, negotiation.



(Please excuse all grammatical, spelling and usage errors, I had to whip this up in between taking calls here at work....)

[Trogdor]

Chardok, you're insane.

As to why rats and roaches are harder to kill than puppies and kitties, think about it. Rats and roachs have been getting attacked since the dawn of human civilization. They've evolved into some of the most relilient species on the planet while the animals we protect and pamper and getting gradually weaker.

[BoredShirtless]

snip

Ha haaaa great story that!!

[darthdavid]

I still like boiling vinegar better.

[Johonebesus]

You can't defeat them, all you can do is keep them out. Put boric acid along all corners, at every joint between a wall and a horizontal surface. That will solve most roach problems (along with cleanliness), and will help a lot with the ants.

As for spiders, just remember that roaches and flies don't bite, and I have yet to encounter fire ants in the home. Even little spiders can bite if they get in the wrong place at the wrong time. And in many places, a bite can range from vaguely annoying to painful and expensive to deadly, so I think it is perfectly legitimate to hate spiders. If I wake up and notice a spider crawling on my bed, I am not going to take the time to determine whether it's a brown recluse before I kill it. I'm just thankful that around here there are only two species to really worry about.