What part of Nature has made it into your house???

[Kitty 34]

Here goes for me:

1. Six years ago we had a swarm of bees eat their way through the siding and come in through the dining room area!!

2. We've had our share of mice and one rat visit us....thankfully not as many with the kitties around now!!!

3. We had a bat flying around the house just the other day!! I'm still silently screaming about that!!!

.....and right now we have a frog stuck in our air-conditioner!!!


Don't get me wrong......I LOVE nature.....just on the OTHER side of the house walls!!!!

 

[Tina]

I remember the day a lizard - a skink - got into the house. DH was not home. It was just me and my two cats. The 3 of us all saw it at the same time. The cats really wanted to investigate, but I was screaming so loud, they were unsure what to do. The poor skink didn't know what to do either. He was trying to run across the living room, but the carpet was slowing him down quite a bit. Finally, I got a big bowl and a record album sleeve (I needed something completely flat) and captured him. I was so freaked out, I opened the front door and chucked the whole thing across the lawn. DH came home a few hours later and wondered what Simon and Garfunkel were doing on the front lawn. I never liked that album anyway.

 

[Kitty 34]

ROTFL Tina!!!!!!

 

[German_Racer]

The poor skink

 

[Buz]

One day I came home from work and the house looked like it had been broken into and ransacked.

Turns out that the cat had caught and brought a gecko in with him. He set it down and it scurried under the couch. The boys started moving furniture while DW ran to our room to hide.

After a little while the middle boy marches into our room and says proudly "I caught it. See!" At that, the gecko jumps into our room and runs under the bed, then the bureau, etc.

I was told to find it or she was going to a hotel for the night. Luckily I was able to get him out in about 5 minutes. Then took an hour to rebuild the house.

Now, we check the cat before he comes in.

Buz

 

[Boots]

Since we live in the country we have had more mice that I care to think about. Several lizards. But never a skunk in the house. We did have one under the house, but we never knew about it until after the fact!!!

 

[Deb in IA]

Barn swallows in the chimney . . .

For some reason, they decided to build a nest in our chimney. Unfortunately, we have a fireplace in the master bedroom. Very romantic, but when those stupid birds were there in the summer, every time the wind blew, they made an awful racket with their chirping!!!

As soon as they were gone, we had chimney caps put on . . .

 

[nativetxn]

Bees ate through your <b>siding</b>???? I've never heard of that happening before. Kind of scary!

A field mouse tried to hibernate in my rubber tree many years ago. Peanut butter and a mouse trap took care of that!

 

[Kitty 34]

Kath, I should clarify myself....the siding is all wood, not vinyl. My DH loves NATURal things...must be why we get a lot of NATURe!!!

 

[linny172]

Gosh and I thought the ants and once in a while crickets were bad. I did have a mouse once and I think I must of bought about 100 traps, couldn't sleep untill it was caught.

 

[Dream]

LOL! Kama needs to see this thread! Hmm, let's see.....birds, lizards, mice, raccoons. opossums (we have a baby opossum living under the steps in the garage right now), a vast array of insects, a hummingbird....all have tried to take up residence at one time or other. One of the funniest was "Mickey". Dh and I were heading up the steps to bed one night and there on the steps was this tiny little mouse. Of course I had to catch it (Dr. Doolittle was my Grandfather I think!) and we always have an empty cage around. Catch it I did, named him Mickey and took the kids to the pet store the next day to stock up on "mouse supplies". Later that night, my kitty decided Mickey was going to be her midnight snack! She knocked the cage over and the chase was on! Mickey made a beeline for ds's room and ran behind his bookcase, then the bed, then the dresser, then the bookcase again...you get the picture! The kids had little nets in the garage that they take to the beach with us to catch crabs and stuff so I ran down and got one. By this time all the furniture was in the middle of ds's room and dh had cornered Mickey behind a toy castle. When I walked in Mickey ran for new cover and WACK...the metal rim of the net chopped his tiny little mouse head better than any mousetrap you have ever seen! I scooped the tiny thing into my hands as he was gasping his last little mousy breath. I was crying as hard as dh was laughing!! He doesn't share my Dr. Doolittle tendancies but he puts up with them rather well. This particular incident has given him many opportunities for a good belly laugh! Believe it or not the kids slept through this entire adventure and to this day believe that Mickey escaped back into the wild with his "Mommy and Daddy".

 

[Kama89]

OMG!!!! Get me OUT of this thread!!!! Jodie, that is the grossest thing I've ever heard... EEEEWWWWW....I am so out of here!! Frogs in the A/C!? Bats!? Birds!? Bees!? Lizards!?Eeewww....eeeewww... eeeewww! *Picture of Kama running far far away from this thread, never to be seen again, inserted here*

GAK!

 

[HugsForEeyore]

My house has these kind of horrible giant grasshopper things hopping around in the 1st floor. They are large, speckled brown with stripped legs, and HUGE antene things on their heads. Every year we have had them since 1986, and this year is our 16th generation of them! I heard they are called "camelback crickets". It's almost funny at our house - me and my parents are so used to them, we just live with them. We never even considered exterminating. They just hop around and so, and we walk by them and go about our business. We used to try to catch them, but they hop so fast that there wasn't much we could do. I guess the crickets are "part of the family" now!

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[browneyes]

When I was a teenager, living at home, I walked across a cord, so I thought. It was the tail of a black rat snake. I was barefoot too. I was the only one that had seen it. It stayed in the house for a little while until it surprised my mom one day. It experienced a fate that Shep would know about. Where I live now, we had a deranged bird fly into the house. That bird scared me more than the snake.

 

[Serena]

Oh my!

I've had a few birds that my cats brought in, but we haven't had to worry about that in a long time.

 

[catsrule]

A bat and a squirrel in our old house, Simba enjoyed chasing them, if it wasn't for him we would have never known.....

In our current house, Simba brought a live mouse into the house via his mouth.

 

[Mamu]

Years ago when we had cats they would sneak critters into the house every now and then. Never had any come in on their own.

One of my DD built a house in the woods and for the first year she would come home to a squirrel running around the kitchen. He would eat through the screens. She soon learned to close all the windows when she went out.

 

[Tiggeroo]

Aside from the usual field mice, and a bat

One morning we woke up and heard a racket in the garage. We had a commercial crab trap that the kids use all summer. A giant possum was stuck in it and hissing like crazy.
Right now I live three houses from the beach and have two surfer boy sons and their assorted friends, so.... the part of nature that is in my house constantly is sand.
In spite of an outside shower I sweep out sand at least twice a day. This is why we have hard wood floors and not carpeting.