HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #21  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 3:11 PM
Centropolis's Avatar
Centropolis Centropolis is offline
disneypilled verhoevenist
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: saint louis
Posts: 11,866
Quote:
Originally Posted by austin242 View Post
As well Austin has more Bats than average. Back in high school our theater had 1000's of bats in it. I remember finding a couple in the theater myself.
http://batspecialist.com/cave-notes/...at-akins-high/

I love the bats though because it helps with our mosquito problem in the summer. We also have huge amounts of fire ants.
we have a lot of bats in st. louis, too. there were caves all along the river in the karst topography and being at the northeast toe of the ozark uplift which is loaded with caves (we still have problems with ponds dewatering in city parks through the cave system...hence missouri is the cave state), and i guess the bats also took up in the many voids in old infrastructure and buildings. you can see them swooping in at dusk, as in austin, controlling the mosquito population.

armadillos have moved into the area, which are fairly disgusting i guess since they carry leprosy...

southern flora and fauna is generally moving in, like kudzu, etc. i had a jobsite that was completely covered in it down by the river north of downtown, inside the city limits of st. louis. this photo is from just south of the city:


stltoday.com

asian carp have invaded suburban lakes around st. louis that have canals connected to the missouri or mississippi river system (this photo is from a culling a few weeks ago):

stltoday.com
__________________
You may Think you are vaccinated but are you Maxx-Vaxxed ™!? Find out how you can “Maxx” your Covid-36 Vaxxination today!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #22  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 3:17 PM
pdxtex's Avatar
pdxtex pdxtex is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 3,119
ants!! thats one thing i forgot about oregon. oregon does have a fck ton of ants. carpenter ants, black ants, and tons and tons of those little picnic ants. every single apartment, house or townhome ive lived in eventually got ants sometime in the summer. i think because of the meditteranean climate, they eventually come seeking water by the middle of july....ants!!!
__________________
Portland!! Where young people formerly went to retire.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #23  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 3:31 PM
muertecaza muertecaza is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2015
Posts: 2,220
I would say the pest most associated with the Phoenix area are scorpions. I've never lived in a place with a big problem, but growing up I did find them in my house a couple times. My sense is that the East Valley suburbs and north Phoenix desert areas are the places with the most scorpions. I've had friends in the East Valley that were able to go out at night with a black light and find them in numbers on their walls.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #24  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 5:18 PM
JoeMusashi JoeMusashi is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 161
The biggest pests in Milwaukee are odors from Lake Michigan.

Milwaukee sometimes smells terrible in certain parts of the city due to natural rotting Cladophora algae. Other times it is dead alewive fish washing up on shore. And other times it’s wind blowing odors from a sewage plant that is used to create Milorganite fertilizer off the lake into some neighborhoods of the city.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #25  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 6:36 PM
pdxtex's Avatar
pdxtex pdxtex is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 3,119
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeMusashi View Post
The biggest pests in Milwaukee are odors from Lake Michigan.

Milwaukee sometimes smells terrible in certain parts of the city due to natural rotting Cladophora algae. Other times it is dead alewive fish washing up on shore. And other times it’s wind blowing odors from a sewage plant that is used to create Milorganite fertilizer off the lake into some neighborhoods of the city.
you can probably thank the lovely zebra (and quagga) mussels for your algae problem. thats constantly on the mind of biologists out west.
__________________
Portland!! Where young people formerly went to retire.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #26  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 7:01 PM
The North One's Avatar
The North One The North One is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 5,489
We're talking about people like their pests now? How progressive.
__________________
Spawn of questionable parentage!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #27  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 7:17 PM
JManc's Avatar
JManc JManc is offline
Dryer lint inspector
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Houston/ SF Bay Area
Posts: 37,783
I wouldn't call critters like spiders, skunks, coyotes, snakes or bats...pests since they were probably here before we were. We brought in the feral cats, hogs, roaches, rats and other invasive species.

Fire ants and mosquitoes need to die though...whether or not who was here first. One thing I don't miss about New York were the black flies that took off a chunk of your flesh.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #28  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 9:17 PM
jd3189 jd3189 is offline
An Optimistic Realist
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Loma Linda, CA / West Palm Beach, FL
Posts: 5,571
^^^ Which parts of New York are those flies found?
__________________
Working towards making American cities walkable again!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #29  
Old Posted Mar 18, 2018, 9:26 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: New York
Posts: 9,782
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaliNative View Post
Whenever I check into a motel or hotel in an unfamiliar city, I ask the front desk clerk if they have checked their rooms for bed bugs. If they look shifty and uncomfortable with the question, I get concerned. Bed bugs are widespread in many cities. They also tend to hitch rides in luggage, so you can bring them home. Bed bugs are totally disgusting pests.
Everybody should do a bed bug check before they settle into any hotel room or rental home. I travel for work roughly every other week and the very first thing I do in any hotel room is take apart the bed to look for evidence of bed bugs. It takes like 2 minutes to do.

My company's office once had an infestation because some travelers had carried them into the office from their hotel room.

Also, bed bugs aren't "dirty" but instead they're bloodsuckers, like mosquitos. They aren't attracted to dirt, they're attracted to humans.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #30  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 5:26 AM
Shawn Shawn is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Tokyo
Posts: 5,935
We have these in spades:


Source: Japanese Giant Hornets

They love beer. Like, really really love beer. They will fly into your opened tall boy of Yebisu Dark, you won't have any fucking clue until you come within a millimeter of swallowing one, and you will have a heart attack as you panic-toss the tall boy away from your face as fast as humanly possible.

Also, our roaches are about 2 inches long and love to fly.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #31  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 5:40 AM
AviationGuy AviationGuy is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Cypress, TX
Posts: 5,315
Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc View Post
I wouldn't call critters like spiders, skunks, coyotes, snakes or bats...pests since they were probably here before we were. We brought in the feral cats, hogs, roaches, rats and other invasive species.

Fire ants and mosquitoes need to die though...whether or not who was here first. One thing I don't miss about New York were the black flies that took off a chunk of your flesh.
I don't care about fire ants, but mosquitoes are the food of our beloved bat population in central Texas.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #32  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 8:51 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 3,133
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdxtex View Post
ants!! thats one thing i forgot about oregon. oregon does have a fck ton of ants. carpenter ants, black ants, and tons and tons of those little picnic ants. every single apartment, house or townhome ive lived in eventually got ants sometime in the summer. i think because of the meditteranean climate, they eventually come seeking water by the middle of july....ants!!!
The little black ants are common in SoCal as well. They swarm into kitchens and other rooms several times in the year. I think the ones we have are called Argentine ants because they originally came from Argentina, probably on a boat. Little black things about a millimeter long. Millions and millions of them. Maybe trillions.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #33  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 8:54 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 3,133
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawn View Post
We have these in spades:


Source: Japanese Giant Hornets

They love beer. Like, really really love beer. They will fly into your opened tall boy of Yebisu Dark, you won't have any fucking clue until you come within a millimeter of swallowing one, and you will have a heart attack as you panic-toss the tall boy away from your face as fast as humanly possible.

Also, our roaches are about 2 inches long and love to fly.
Thos are YUGE! Do they sting? Must be painful. Those are scarier than anything we have in SoCal, except maybe black widow spiders with the red hourglass on the abdomen. But the black widows generally don't sting or bite you unless you really bother them. Easy to get rid of. Aggressive "killer" bees are also a local problem, and sometimes people that work outside get stung by them many times. Not all that common.

Last edited by CaliNative; Mar 19, 2018 at 9:55 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #34  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 8:57 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 3,133
Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Everybody should do a bed bug check before they settle into any hotel room or rental home. I travel for work roughly every other week and the very first thing I do in any hotel room is take apart the bed to look for evidence of bed bugs. It takes like 2 minutes to do.

My company's office once had an infestation because some travelers had carried them into the office from their hotel room.

Also, bed bugs aren't "dirty" but instead they're bloodsuckers, like mosquitos. They aren't attracted to dirt, they're attracted to humans.
Lots and lots of hotels & motels have them in some cities (Cincinnati is a hotspot) and many apartments as well. Trained dogs are used to sniff them out. Supposedly they have a slight cilantro-like odor that the pooches can detect. If you wake up with red marks and welts, probably bed bugs.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #35  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 9:03 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 3,133
Pigeons

Yes pigeons are pests. They aren't bad birds, except when vast flocks gather in public places and smother it in poop. Not sure if they carry disease, but the poop is disgusting. Please don't feed the pigeons.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #36  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 9:21 AM
CaliNative CaliNative is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 3,133
"Silverfish"

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun Belt View Post
In the past few years I've dealt with lots of spiders, some ants and roaches.

Spiders and ants are easily remedied, just call the exterminator. They'll spray the baseboards and window sills and sometimes the exterior trouble spots and they're immediately gone.

Roaches, you have to remove everything out of the kitchen cabinets and counter tops because that's where they reside. It's more of a pain than anything else, haven't had a problem since.
Sometimes find these insects called "silverfish" in dark corners and drawers. Maybe 1/2 centimeter long, silvery in color. Not sure what they eat or if they spread disease, but I do wash the stuff they crawl on. Any way to get rid of them? Also sometimes get pantry moths. The little suckers feed inside boxes of cereal, catfood etc., or rather they lay eggs and the larvae feed on said cereal. Bought some pantry moth traps and they trap the moths & seem to knock down the infestations. Also need to seal up food they might feed on, or put it in the fridge. If you have little moths flying around in your house, tan colored, about 1/2 a cm. long, probably pantry moths. A lot of supermarkets have infestations. You see them flying around in the cereal sections. They just love cereal, or their maggot larvae do. Check your cereal for maggots before you dig in if you suspect you have an infestation.

Last edited by CaliNative; Mar 19, 2018 at 9:49 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #37  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 10:55 AM
LouisVanDerWright LouisVanDerWright is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 7,443
Silverfish eat other insects and are actually good to have around. You should just relocate them outside if you don't like them running around your habitat.

Chicago has a pretty big rat population but the city is constantly poisoning them which works very well for like one rat lifecycle before a settler from a nearby area that wasn't poisoned shows up and spawns a whole new litter of them. They are really annoying less from a santitation problem and more from a property damage perspective. They will gnaw holes in siding or even undermine concrete slabs. My garage is only 10 years old and already has a cracked slab because they dug dens all under one side of it causing it to settle pretty close to 3/4 of an inch. Then a skunk set up shop in the dens and sprayed like 5 neighborhood dogs.

Come to think of it, Chicago has a pretty impressive"wildlife" population. Like skunks which have also become something of a problem in my neighborhood. Same thing happens with skunks as with rats, everyone calls animal control, they come grab the skunk and take it to the forest preserves and no skunks for like six months until another no relocated skunk shows up and births like 12 skunklets.

The good news is that we have seen a boom in predator populations. Particularly in birds of prey (Hawks and Perigrine Falcons) as well as coyotes. My neighborhood used to have a massive pidgeon population until Pergrines set up shop in the church steeple and have two or three hungry mouths to feed each spring. That one breeding pair basically slaughtered all the sky rats on my block in a year. You frequently see pidgeon wings laying on the ground now because that's the only part of the bird the falcons aren't interested in. At the end of the day, the only real way to control these pests is to have ample predator populations to devour them as quickly as they breed.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #38  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 12:59 PM
hauntedheadnc's Avatar
hauntedheadnc hauntedheadnc is online now
A gruff individual.
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Greenville, SC - "Birthplace of the light switch rave"
Posts: 13,334
Stinkbugs are a lot of fun to deal with, especially in the fall and the spring. In the fall they're all coming inside to find a place to wait out the winter and tourists in hotels in particular find them a terror. In the spring they emerge from their indoor hiding places and blunder around looking to find their way back outside again. I worked in hotels for several years and starting in October you'd have well-heeled assholes calling down in conniptions and threatening to go elsewhere because they'd found one. Problem though, is that whether you're paying $500/night or $80/night, you're still going to have to deal with them. They're everywhere, in the nice hotels and neighborhoods, and in the shitty no-tells and housing projects. They're an invasive species and nothing eats them. Like Cartman, they run with twelve gangs and do what they want.

Meanwhile, the forests of Western North Carolina are pretty much under constant attack. The hemlock woolly adelgid has already killed off most of the wild hemlocks and the only ones to be found thriving are the ones in people's yards that they douse with pesticide on a regular basis. While this is going on pine beetles are killing the pines and emerald ash borers are doing what they do best and killing the ash trees. Plus, fungus is attacking oak trees, dogwood trees, and something is also eating the locust trees. They leaf out and look beautiful up until late summer and then every year something comes along and eats the locust leaves down to rusty scraps.
__________________
"To sustain the life of a large, modern city in this cloying, clinging heat is an amazing achievement. It is no wonder that the white men and women in Greenville walk with a slow, dragging pride, as if they had taken up a challenge and intended to defy it without end." -- Rebecca West for The New Yorker, 1947
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #39  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 1:36 PM
Sun Belt Sun Belt is offline
BANNED
 
Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: The Envy of the World
Posts: 4,926
Quote:
Originally Posted by jd3189 View Post
^^^ Which parts of New York are those flies found?
If they're the same as "Green Heads" they're bad.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #40  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2018, 7:26 PM
Pedestrian's Avatar
Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 24,177
The biggest problem I've had in San Francisco has been grain weevils:






https://www.google.com/search?q=grai...eY3dmpfH9ByHM:

I like imported Italian pasta and several times I've gotten boxes of it with these things inside. The first time I didn't notice them until they escaped the packaging and infested my kitchen. I had to empty all the shelves, toss out all grain-based products and spray all the shelves. That got rid of them but now when I buy imported grain products I store them sealed in something impervious to insects.
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > City Discussions
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 11:19 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.