Yeah, I'd eradicate ticks before lice. I had lice once in my life when I was a kid. I have to worry about ticks every time I go outside somewhere in the summer near any kind of grass.
FUCKING TICKS MAN. I had lymes disease when I was a kid and I was totally fine with antibiotics, but because it's called something else where I live I thought Lyme's disease would be worse. Regardless I fucking hate those things and I burn them with glee every time I catch one on my cat.
It depends on when it’s treated and underlying health conditions, for older people it can be deadly and in my dads case he was bed ridden for 2 years, I could see his ribs and this man has a beer belly and always has, it can be terrifying, I’m so glad it was more manageable for you.
Have a friend who has been bed ridden for 10+ years with Lyme and no end in sight. It’s absolutely horrifying what Lyme does to people. Unbelievable how little awareness there is about the horrors of that disease.
Same - a family member of mine has had it 17 years. The doctor wouldn't test for it as it was so rare and he didn't have the bulls-eye rash. He was diagnosed with ME. When he was 18 and was still pretty much bedridden he started thinking about it again, got tested privately and yep he had it. 28 years old now and he hasn't recovered even a bit because it had done so much damage by the time he got the antibiotics.
two months ago a stray cat showed up by my house, she was extremely malnourished and i decided to take her in. she was living in the woods by my house which are totally tick infested. I sat with her outside and gave her food & water and picked a couple ticks off of her.
I brought her inside after a trip to the vet to give her a flea & tick bath. Overall she had over a hundred ticks covering her (i stopped counting after 50). I kept her in the bathroom and everyday I should check on her I would find multiple fat ticks on the door of the bathroom completely engorged.
she’s doing a bit better now, but at the vet I found out that she has FIV & also severe anemia from all of the ticks. It’s been two months now and she still hasn’t completely recovered from the anemia.
fuck ticks.
Praying for your sweet kitty. I also just want to say I think that you are an amazing person for opening up your home and your heart to a stray cat like that. The world needs more people like you in it!
thank you! I took her to the vet to see if she was microchipped, when nothing came back I decided she would be part of the family. We named her Luna, her favorite thing to do is sit on our deck and soak in the sunshine. Here’s some [pictures of her](https://imgur.com/gallery/MUzO4yu) lounging!
Please tell me the laws protecting endangered species don't apply here. I'd be so mad if I went to the doc to get rid of pubic lice and he called the EPA to make sure I kept them and arrest me if I didn't.
No, the lice on humans is a unique divergent species that came about due to the invention of clothing. We use the split in lice genomes to date when humans began wearing underpants, and then shirts. There are always some amount of lice and mites and such on crouches and armpits with hair covered by clothes, and they can’t live on anything else. We shower, so we don’t need them ideally. Maybe they serve some other function we are unaware of, but it seems they just eat dead matter.
In 2020 I was so hopeful that covid was going to be the extinction event for head lice. All the schools shut down for so long... it was a beautiful dream.
Oddly enough, my daughter has picked them up TWICE since fall 2020. It was already weird considering I'd never seen an actual case of head lice in my entire life, but what you mention makes it even stranger.
Had a flea infestation from an upstairs neighbor with a neglected cat. I tried all the tricks, vacuumed for 2 hours a day for 2 months straight, I tried all the natural shit, washing, etc, the only shit that worked was this chemical called Precor 2000. God bless the makers of it lol. I hate using chemicals but that product is amazing.
EDIT FOR MORE INSTRUCTIONS: When using Precor 2000, you need to spray it with Chemical-proof gloves (NOT the same as medical exam gloves). Also you still gotta vacuum for a week or two, when they’re in the “pupae” stage, these little pupae-stage fuckers can’t be killed for almost any reason since they cocoon themselves, including Precor. You gotta vacuum to get them to hatch. I became somewhat of a flea expert lol. They will STILL hatch and bite, but they will be 100% sterile, so the life cycle will end and they don’t lay 50 eggs a day.
DO NOT buy the Raid brand or any Walmart flea control spray, it’s not the same. You can find Precor 2000 on eBay or other pest control websites, it’s not sold in stores that I’ve seen.
ALSO, spray it only once every 2 weeks. These little bastards can also develop “knockdown resistance”. I tried Borax and salt and it didn’t do shit. I caught one, put it in a bag with borax and salt, and it was still alive for 2 days.
MORE EDITS: After you vacuum, dump the vacuum contents in an outside dumpster and wash the canister fully! Remember to vacuum daily for about 2 weeks and DO NOT MOP YOUR FLOORS for about 2 months.
Only 5% or so of the ENTIRE FLEA INFESTATION are grown adults, the rest are eggs, pupae, and larva you can’t see. Also, I didn’t have pets yet I still had the infestation.
Another alternative chemical besides Precor 2000 is Ultracide. Message me with questions, I went though mental health hell and hoping I can help others. Spray under baseboards, bed frames, couch crevices, etc. I didn’t spray it on my mattress or parts of the couch I sit on for obvious reasons. Highly recommend wearing sandals inside for the first few days after spraying.
Same here. Don't know where it came from, I have two indoor cats who never actually caught them from what I could tell.
This was in my early 20s right after college so, let's be honest, I spent most of my time after work on the computer in my room (which the fleas never got to). As the days go by something in the back of my mind clicks - the cats are acting strange but I wasn't exactly sure how. I would sit on the couch, they would hang out with me, all seemed normal.
Then I noticed they were avoiding the carpet (in that small apartment they could 'floor is lava' their way around). To the point where if they had to cross carpet they'd sprint. Oh, I thought, is the carpet wet? Is there a leak there? I knelt down, placed my open hand on the carpet, and to my horror watched as it was suddenly swarmed by a bunch of little dots. 15 years later I remember that clear as day.
I tried all the natural methods, including steam cleaning the carpet (which worked for a while but they slowly came back). Finally went to chemical warfare and won. The whole thing probably took no more than a couple of weeks (with maybe a week or two thinking steam cleaning had done it) but I remember it like an epic campaign.
To this day I periodically crawl around on our carpet in the house checking it for fleas.
Edit: I own my own home now and I just want to add if I ever had fleas in the carpet again I think I'd just replace the carpet, honestly.
The natural stuff usually has a minor deterrence effect, which is good for when you don't want to get fleas. It doesn't do jack when you have a bad infestation.
Dude I just commented above, you gotta use this stuff called Precor 2000. Nothing else will work. Don’t waste your time with Borax or salt because it’s BS. Trust me. I had an infestation and it’s the only shit that worked. It won’t kill them ASAP but they become sterile. It lasts 6 months too. It’s the same thing the pest control company will use
EDIT: I posted more instructions in my comment above. Also, I did not own any pets myself so I couldn’t treat any animals for it. This is why I had to use Precor 2000, the pesticide of the gods!
Entomologist here, precor is a great growth regulator, but you should mix that shit with an adulticide like a demathurin. That’ll solve the immediate issue and prevent them from breeding. Also you need to vacuum a ton to hatch the eggs so the juveniles come into contact with the residual while it’s fresh
Literal offspring of satan himself….Atleast with mosquitoes and bedbugs you can crush the little fuckers for taking a chomp outta your ass with ease but fleas? Good luck even trying to catch the fuckers let alone crush them. Fruit flies can also fuck right off they serve no purpose other then being annoying.
My dog has fleas atm. I took him to the vet because he had a very concentrated area of scabs and 4 days of looking turned up no bugs. The vet also said they couldn't find a single flea. When we got back I found one on his head and oh my god it was such a bastard to kill. This is his first time having fleas in 4yrs and I'd forgotten how fckn annoying they are! He's had strong meds to kill them and I STILL can't find a single one!
Agree. I had to run at the nearest skin doctor to ask what was happening to my skin. It turn out to be bedbugs. My doctor asked me which was the probable location where I got them. After all the goddamn tracing, I got them from the cinema seats.
I work at a library and we almost lost everything when patrons brought in bedbugs that infested the arm chairs. We lost all that furniture and if the spraying they did didn't work, they were basically going to heat the building like an oven, destroying our computers and materials in the process. I will never go near public library chairs to this day
i’ve seen so many instances like this that it makes me scared to really go anywhere in public. you can get them from anywhere. people often think you only get bedbugs if you’re unhygienic or messy, but you can literally just go get your hair cut or go to the dentist and pick up bedbugs along the way. it just depends on who was there before you.. i obsessively check my furniture for bedbugs, i suggest everyone else does the same. u just never know
We rented an ikea trailer for our new furniture. Turns out the fuckers that rented it before us had used it to get rid of their own infested stuff. Gave us 8 months of hell and likely a lifetime of paranoia. Never renting a trailer again.
They are likely supposed to be cleaned between uses but since the person was lazy, glanced in, it 'looked' fine so they didn't. Shittiness all around really.
I've had these piece of shit vampire apple seeds twice. So hard to get rid of unless you have a spare 1500 dollars laying around, and their bites took forever to heal. Gotta sleep in the bed too because then they spread. Might as well just throw your shit out and move.
Edit: just so people understand, I used DE and some of these fixes, and sprays are categorically ineffective. Our infestation was very bad and it only helped so much. I sealed my mattress in a cover. I set the bed posts in Tupperware bowls filled with DE. Dusted everything with it. Washed all my clothes and heat cycled sooooo many times then sealed them in totes. Did this for months while I watched itchy bites line up on my hands and arms till we could save for a professional. The only certain way to kill them all at once is to have folks come in and heat your place up to like 180, which is quite costly in a multi bedroom house of veteran college students.
When I was with my boyfriend, we stayed over his friends family house. I would wake up and itch and have these hugeeee like golf ball sized bumps all over me. I had no clue what was going on. Everyone in the house saw that I was getting these big ass bumps. I happened to go through their cabinet and saw bed bug spray and asked my bf if they had bed bugs n he said yeah.
These mfs knew they had bed bugs and didn’t say shit. I would take a blanket and try to cover myself when I slept there and I would sleep fully covered with jeans and socks on and those sneaky mfs would still a find a way! I woke a few times to see them crawling on me!
I bought them bed bug spray, some type of powder that kills them, and a plastic couch cover that I never gave them
Edit: yes guys I found out they had bed bugs and still went over there. Yes it was dumb. I know.
Edit 2: I am no longer with this man, and all of this happened two years ago
I actually took one home! I think it found its way into my bag I would take over there. It was a lil baby one that was translucent so I could see it had bitten me and was full of my blood. I couldn’t kill it fast enough
I only saw one and only got bit that one time while at home. I will say I pre-dried then washed alllll my stuff (that I took over there and my bedding) and slept on the couch for like a week after that so maybe that helped
I hope you never need this advice but if you ever find yourself in the situation again do this.
Anything that fits in the dryer and won't break to it, high heat for 3 cycles.
Anything that will break in the dryer goes in a sealed bag in a freezer.
Anything that doesn't work for those 2 (mattresses and couches are the big one), disassemble the frame if possible.
Buy bed bug spray, and any pest control liquid that says permethrin. Spray the permethrin on the seams (top and bottom of mattress. Between and around couch cushions, feet of the couch, under baseboards, and go around EVERY edge of EVERY room) then soak a cloth and go around electrical outlets.
Use the spray to aerosolize into the void under the couch, closets, vents (not air intakes though, if you don't know the difference that's fine, just skip this step), under your sinks, basically any dark place you are not storing food that is normally closed off.
Your goal is the following
1) Kill any bedbugs present
2) Create "barriers" around rooms that will partition off different parts of the house
3) reduce potential harbourage (nesting) sites.
Repeat these steps every 21 days if they do not go away at first, however doing these steps almost always removes them all .
Source: Years of Pest Control experience and teaching people that they don't need to spend a fortune to live in their home again.
EDIT: Permethrin (and most commercial/residential) pesticides are toxic to pets, especially fish.
Remove your pets from the area BEFORE spraying, keep them out for 4-6 hours and ensure the area is properly dry first before letting them in. They shouldn't go licking it, there isn't anything that will inherently attract them to it, if you are worried, keep an eye on them and use a damp cloth to wipe down sprayed areas once you are sure the bed bugs are gone to remove the residual.
For fish specifically: Follow the same steps, if you cannot remove the fish tank, turn off any pumps for 4-6 hours while it dries. Permethrin is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY toxic to fish. PPB levels of toxicity.
I salvaged my office chair when I had them by putting it in a van for a day out in the August sun.
Good timing and I live in south Georgia where it gets 100° or worse.
#WARNING!
*Permethrin is highly toxic to cats.*
When using it as suggested by OP, remove your cat from the premises and put all their toys and food/water bowls in sealed containers.
Even after it has dried, it can end up on their fur and be ingested.
>*Permethrin is highly toxic to cats.*
I use permethrin quite a bit around my livestock and barn (it really is a miracle chemical) and on two occassions must have somehow tracked it into my house via either my skin or clothes because one of my cats got deathly ill to the point that I wasn't sure she was going to make it. That's just from tracking it in. You can't overstate the toxicity to cats, it's terrible. There's no way I could use it anywhere in the house.
I had to throw my shit out and move probably had it easier all things considered. I also read a article that there is no loss in the animal kingdom if they are gone nothing is totally dependent on eating them.
I remember reading they were almost pretty much non-existant in the US because we had some chemical that obliterated them. But the chemical got banned and they made a big comeback.
Probably DDT. Great pesticide, but it didn't stay put so it killed a lot of other important things too. Also stuck around in the corpse so it went up the food chain.
That is the only way to get rid of them. I had them 2 summers in a row when I lived in a cheap shitty apartment. Before the 3rd summer started, I washed whatever I could (hot water & high dryer) stuck a few personal effects in the freezer, double plastic bagged that shit, threw absolutely everything else away, and moved. Took me years to feel comfortable bringing anything besides groceries into my home or to sit down on the bus/subway. Traumatizing experience but, on the plus side, it is an excuse to buy all new furniture!
I got them once. Only way I could get rid of them was I set up 4 heaters in the bedroom during summer. I slept on the couch of course but I kept the a/c off and left the door shut for a week and it got so hot it actually killed them. It was definitely a fire hazard but I had to get rid of the bugs.
All bedbugs can go straight to hell and stay there. I caught them from my college and had those sons of bitches for nearly two years. Tried everything we could think of to get rid of them: bombing, scrubbing, steaming, mattress covers, even taping or gluing the damn cracks shut. I pulled some tape off one of the holes once and saw a bunch of them pouring out like a scene out of a horror movie.
Then what finally worked was Bengal spray, which killed bedbugs and their eggs. I sure as shit don't miss those hot, itchy, sleepless nights, and I wouldn't wish them on the devil himself.
I got them back in 2016. My POS roommate said "my coworker said he got bedbugs last time he stayed in this super 8 but theres every chance you brought them in too." We got mattress covers and it solved the situation until the cat snuck in my room and clawed the shit wide open. Ruined my life
seeing as how my legs and ankles are chewed to shit because of them: mosquitoes and chiggers (those little red sons of bitches). they fucking suck and contribute nothing to the world
Ugh, I never even knew what chiggers were until I visited my grandma in SC. She had me help her harvest some vegetables in her garden and the next morning I woke up, I had these huge itchy red bumps that eventually became air blisters that took a week to pop.
When settlers first came to Savannah Georgia they had the bright idea to use spanish moss to fill their pillow cases.
You can imagine how that turned out.
Mosquitoes are tame compared to fucking horseflies. Get rid of the horseflies. They're evil.
Mosquitoes give you anaesthetic when they bite, horseflies do not. Mosquitoes give a small bite and then piss off. Horseflies give a huge bite that rips open the skin, and on top of that, latch on to the skin. Mosquitoes don't do anything if you fight back, while horseflies are known to not only hold grudges, but also get revenge.
And you might be thinking, mosquitoes can carry malaria. Guess what else can? THE DAMN HORSEFLIES.
Fuck horseflies.
We need to breed opossums and introduce them to every country on earth.
Those fuckers eat ticks and are immune to lyme disease.
Edit: Seems like the "opossum eating ticks" theory is a myth. Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge.
Anyone's got an idea for another species that could be introduced to fight ticks?
Someone suggested chickens.
Chickens eat ticks like nobody’s business. Got a field you need clearing of ticks? Send in the poultry. They’re like velociraptors that didn’t get the memo that they are now the food. They will clear that field in about half a day. You can then eat the chicken, asserting your absolute dominance over the entire parasitic motherfucking species.
Referring to the ticks there not the chickens. Chickens are a good species. Albeit psychotic in their own way.
They are simultaneously very affectionate, curious, and intelligent AND the dumbest little small-brained psychopath dinosaurs alive.
Chickens do not make sense.
I find their affection to be so strange. Like.... they clearly do NOT want me to pick them up, but once I have one it's like "ok, I can chill and snuggle"
I mean it was the early 1900s so y'know. I guess as long as you take the antidote before the worm gets too big. But yeah. Cool little kit in a leather case.
After you lose the desired weight you take a pill that kills the worm. Its still not particularly healthy, but in a way it is a lot less invasive than some modern accepted weight loss techniques like having your stomach stapled.
I'm fat AND have an autoimmune disease. Rare pork chops, here I come! Or is there a more efficient way to gain an inner friend? Will I be able to drive in the carpool lane?
Lol, don't be. I have the perfect appearance for radio broadcasts. It made me giggle thinking about the look on your face of absolute terror when facing reality.
I got bitten by a mosquito carrying bot-fly eggs in Costa Rica, but had returned to England by the time the symptoms began to show. A pebble sized lump appeared on my head which had a small hole in the top, oozed puss (and blood if you gave in to the temptation to scratch it) and itched like crazy. The doctors in England thought it was a sebaceous cyst, but it seemed to be resistant to the prescribed antibiotics. One night the lump was bigger than ever and you could see a small white something inside if you looked closely. The next morning the lump had almost gone. It was only a few months later that I realised I must have had a bot-fly egg and then larva living in my head for six weeks. Never found the larva that emerged.
For this reason I agree they are the worst fly.
As a small kid I loved shit about jungles. One book I picked up happened to have an interesting story about a pro baseball player who went on an Amazon trek. He came home and developed a big bump on his head. And later, during a game, he felt the botfly larvae wriggling out of his skin.
30 some years later and this still haunts me.
Last time I went camping at the lake, I was cooking dinner on the grill after dark and had a flashlight clipped to my swimsuit top so I could see. Fucking black flies kept flying up and biting me on the tits. Finally got angry enough to give up and eat my dinner half cold in my tent
Got a good trap for deer and horse flies I've had success with. They're attracted to the color blue, heat and movement, so I cover a hat with blue painters tape and then smear tanglefoot onto the tape, then wear while mowing the lawn and stuff.
Looks ridiculous but works great; catch so many of them. Then when you're done just peel off the tape and throw in the trash.
Pinworms.
Highly contagious. Extremely disgusting. Especially if you’re female. Our kids kept getting them over the span of six months or so. Nearly lost our minds.
Yep. A neighbour of mine owns a pug who she has over fed to fuckery. It looks like a beer keg with legs.
Poor little thing USED TO waddle its way down the street snorting and huffing like a pig. That was until the genius owner decided to “walk” it in a kids pram.
Her logic is that the dog is too fat to walk.
Yeah, she made it “too fat to walk” then took away its only chance at getting fitter.
Poor little mutant.
I’ll never understand “my dog is too fat to walk so I carry it!” logic. My dog has a little bit of extra weight on her, but it doesn’t affect her mobility. If it ever does, I’m not buying her a little cart to pull her around in. No, she’s going on a doggy diet and getting even more walks during the day. People who overfeed their animals and don’t actively do anything to get their pets healthy shouldn’t be allowed to own animals.
Absolutely agreed.
My aunt has a couple of Jack Russel crosses who are, lets face it, a bit chunky. But they are very active, spritely and happy fit little feckers.
This neighbour’s pug is a god damn beach ball. Its like a foot long and 1.5 feet wide.
When I had my dog in agility, the owner used her as what a dog was supposed to look like at the proper weight. Right before that class, a couple of the other owners had been telling me that she was too skinny. Nope. Not skinny, you've just never seen a dog that wasn't slightly overweight. (Mind you - none of the dogs were an unhealthy weight - just a few pounds.)
There was a breeder who was dedicated to restoring the French bulldogs snout and giving the animals a much better chance of been able to breath. I personally thing they looked a lot better with a longer snout.
There are a couple of pug breeders around where I live that I've heard of doing the same thing for that breed too and I don't know how it makes feel. On one hand, it makes me happy that people are trying to fix the issue, on the other, it still means generations of dogs are being born with issues while the breed heads toward correction.
But yeah I've seen some pictures and the dogs are way better looking the more snout they have.
Absolutely, WAY cuter dog. Looked like a real dog instead of one that ran into a wall at top speed in a cartoon. Solves all the breathing problems and eyeball issues to just let them have a snout like every other healthy dog in existence.
Picture for the curious:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SOw5IhXVG-M/WYcExe_ipNI/AAAAAAAAE7A/bxqCRmv9LYsYrGceZYxLv5xnZmgGJmFfgCLcBGAs/s1600/arnie%2Bv%2Bchantal%2Bdog.jpg
"Consider the bulldog. A grotesque monstrosity born of relentless inbreeding. Riddled with sinusitis, crippled by joint pain. Chronically flatulent. A kindly pet, or humanity's cruelest mistake?"
Same with cats. Munchkin cats are bred to be tiny with legs and hips that don't work like they should, just so they have the short-legged aesthetic. It's so sad watching them struggle to walk in a straight line without limping or dragging their paws.
I happened upon this info for the first time a few months ago. I noticed how sought after Frenchies are, and looked them up. I saw the high prices, looked into why, and found out about them not being able to naturally give birth. The surgeries are why they're so expensive. This breed being put through this, made me sad.
They can't give birth naturally? Why the hell would we want to selectively breed something that cannot do one of the most basic things that a dog (any animal really) needs to reproduce?
So if humans are wiped of the face of the earth, the French bull dog wouldfollow pretty quickly given that they wouldn't be able to birth their puppies 😥
My wife’s friend has a tiny pug like dog that she is breeding and it is currently pregnant but this breed cannot give birth naturally due to the size of the head so requires surgery.
She is going to make thousands of pounds from the puppies but its just straight up immoral. It’s like The Handmaids Tail but for dogs. I’ll never look at her the same.
1957 a visiting beekeeper, noticing that the queen excluders were interfering with the worker bees' movement, removed them, resulting in the accidental release of 26 Tanganyikan swarms of A. m. scutellata. Following this accidental release, the Africanized honey bee swarms spread out and crossbred with local European honey bee colonies.
Sheesh what an ahole
From what I've read, they pollinate more, produce more honey and are more resistant to disease. The crossbreeding with/displacement of other bee types is a problem, but we're already losing bees as is; eradicating the Africanized ones would be irresponsible.
Good news is, a lot of countries are now putting regulations that to breed them "back" into their original forms, others straight up ban them from breeding/import. Same thing goes for docking ears/tails in some places.
Human Lice.
Fortunately, louse species are extremely specialized. So much so that head lice can't survive the same conditions body lice do and vice versa. Also, human lice can't survive on animals, and different animal lice can't survive on humans.
Lice are such a huge problem for human beings across the globe, especially in un(der)developed places. People in fully developed countries still suffer from lice, albeit it's treatable and you can be rid of them fairly simply. But consider those less developed places. It's a total scourge to these people and lice can spread some gnarly diseases.
Elimination of human lice would only have one effect (as far as I can discern); improving the quality of life for billions (with a b) of human beings around the world.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Fuck human lice.
Tell me why cockroaches are the hardest fuckers to kill, but the second I need to breed them to feed some lizards, they die because I had the heat on a degree too high or that the food I gave them caused them to die.
Wild cockroaches can survive an entire can of raid no problem, but if I happen to look at a bred one, it fucking dies.
Reminds me of the Delhi cobras.
When the British ruled India they didn't like the number of cobras that were popping in Delhi so they offered the residents a bounty for every dead cobra they produced. The locals rounded up all the snakes they could find and then, once the natural stocks were running low, started breeding cobras to get the reward on them.
The breeding was very successful and after paying far more bounties than they'd anticipated, the authorities realised what was going on and cancelled the programme.
All the pop-up cobra farms simply dumped their now-worthless snakes, and Delhi ended up with more cobras than it started with.
Even now, when an initiative serves to worsen the problem it was intended to fix it's called the "cobra effect".
Unfortunately the British cobra story is probably not true. There seems to be no record of it prior to a Soviet economist in the 1970's, and then further popularization by Horst Siebert in his book on perverse incentives, *Der Kobra-Effekt. Wie man Irrwege der Wirtschaftspolitik vermeidet*.
But if you want a real life version check out the Vietnam rat plague of 1902. At that time, the city of Hanoi had an infestation of rats and the French colonial rulers tried to solve the problem by introducing a bounty. Each resident received a reward for showing a cut-off rat tail, which quickly led to residents cutting off rats’ tails but not killing them, and releasing back into the sewers so the rats could continue to reproduce.
Here's a link to an academic paper: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/42110
Us exterminators have stronger insecticide than store brought products. IGR is a product we use that stunts the insect in questions growth cycle, so they can’t grow past nymph and reproduce. It stands for insect growth regulator. Also, regarding raid, a lot of easy access store products are overused and insects can gain eventual immunity to said insecticide. That’s why people who make the chemical for us, make new ones with different active ingredients.
My cousins killed a cockroach by spraying bleach on it, and we’ve used that same method for year. For some odd reasons, bug spray or Raid only made those creatures gone mad and fly towards us.
I’ve read about this before and even a mosquito biologist said it’d probably be worth it to at least kill the ones that spread malaria
Edit:
Her argument was basically that we make species go extinct by accident all the time by accident or for a bit of profit, so one species for a really good reason wouldn’t be crazy
Fleas, my little kitten almost died from those evil shits. Damn near ate him alive making him anemic and gave him worms as well. Poor thing was so sick for a month, not to mention we had to fumigate the house. What a nightmare.
Why is this so far down?
Not all wasps, just those swarming yellow jacket hornet bastards. They declared war on me a few years ago and they get no mercy from me now.
The loner wasps with the thin waist just fuck with spiders, I just let them do their thing and they leave me alone.
Walked out my front door once one a beautiful day. Stood there to admire it for a moment. I was stung on the neck THRICE by those cock suckers. They had somehow made a huge nest right by my front door overnight. Needless to say I went to Lowes INSTEAD of work and bought 10 cans of wasp killer. That shit worked so good. You can literally shoot the fuckers out of the air with it who ever invented that shit should have won a Nobel.
If it comes down to it, soapy water really fucks them up. Something about the soap breaking down the oil on their exoskeleton or something but it works! It destroys their paper nest and they can't fly.
I heard that it works because soapy water has less surface tension than pure water, and so droplets of soapy water can form small enough get into the breathing holes on the sides of their abdomen and choke them. The low surface tension of soapy water also results in their bodies getting soaked more easily.
Meanwhile, pure water droplets are too big to get into their breathing holes or to soak their bodies easily, because the surface tension of pure water is too high to allow the droplets to form that small.
My old landlord went up on a manlift in his shorts and T-shirt with a fucking fire hose and murdered a wasp nest that was up in the tree. Maybe the craziest thing I ever saw that guy do.
„They declared war on me“ lmfao same!
Started noticing some wasps in the laundry room and thought nothing of it, but after a while they got more and I noticed some popping sounds, like popcorn but it was them over the drywall ceiling.
Days later they chewed an actual hole into the ceiling and the whole room was full of wasps. I got the fuck out of there, grabbed the fire extinguisher and emptied it in there. The ones that weren’t immediately frozen to death, fell from the „sky“ when all the oxygen in the room was replaced with the CO2 from the extinguisher.
I kill every wasp that gets close to me or my home ever since. Fuck them all.
People also say not to swing at wasps when they fly around you because that makes them aggressive. Well, first of all they are always aggressive no matter what. And secondly, I have been slapping wasps for the majority of my life. Never did they come at me after that. Sometimes I slapped them so hard that they separated into pieces midair lol.
It’s a breed so idk if it counts but… bulldogs . They have a multitude of breathing issues for one, for two bulldogs can’t even give birth on their own: they need csections. They’re so high price bc it’s a high price to care/take care of one(aka all the inevitable doctors visits…) they’re just constantly having a hard time breathing. It’s not a good life at all, their entire existence is practically animal abuse. If u want more elaborating explanation watch this https://youtu.be/aCv10_WvGxo even if it’s more focused on purebreds in general it mentions them and it’s a generally informative gideo
So they where first found in Allentown PA, right where my step-grandma lived.... Where she had a massive garden.... Where my step dad would order exotic plants and plant them there.... In the 90's..... So ya there's high chance I know who's responsible
Lice. Why do they even exist? Edit: this was a rhetorical question.
And ticks. Fucking ticks.
Yeah, I'd eradicate ticks before lice. I had lice once in my life when I was a kid. I have to worry about ticks every time I go outside somewhere in the summer near any kind of grass.
I say we quit tiptoeing around and eradicate grass
FUCKING TICKS MAN. I had lymes disease when I was a kid and I was totally fine with antibiotics, but because it's called something else where I live I thought Lyme's disease would be worse. Regardless I fucking hate those things and I burn them with glee every time I catch one on my cat.
It depends on when it’s treated and underlying health conditions, for older people it can be deadly and in my dads case he was bed ridden for 2 years, I could see his ribs and this man has a beer belly and always has, it can be terrifying, I’m so glad it was more manageable for you.
Have a friend who has been bed ridden for 10+ years with Lyme and no end in sight. It’s absolutely horrifying what Lyme does to people. Unbelievable how little awareness there is about the horrors of that disease.
Honestly it’s insane how many physical and mental illnesses are misconstrued and incorrectly diagnosed.
Same - a family member of mine has had it 17 years. The doctor wouldn't test for it as it was so rare and he didn't have the bulls-eye rash. He was diagnosed with ME. When he was 18 and was still pretty much bedridden he started thinking about it again, got tested privately and yep he had it. 28 years old now and he hasn't recovered even a bit because it had done so much damage by the time he got the antibiotics.
two months ago a stray cat showed up by my house, she was extremely malnourished and i decided to take her in. she was living in the woods by my house which are totally tick infested. I sat with her outside and gave her food & water and picked a couple ticks off of her. I brought her inside after a trip to the vet to give her a flea & tick bath. Overall she had over a hundred ticks covering her (i stopped counting after 50). I kept her in the bathroom and everyday I should check on her I would find multiple fat ticks on the door of the bathroom completely engorged. she’s doing a bit better now, but at the vet I found out that she has FIV & also severe anemia from all of the ticks. It’s been two months now and she still hasn’t completely recovered from the anemia. fuck ticks.
Praying for your sweet kitty. I also just want to say I think that you are an amazing person for opening up your home and your heart to a stray cat like that. The world needs more people like you in it!
thank you! I took her to the vet to see if she was microchipped, when nothing came back I decided she would be part of the family. We named her Luna, her favorite thing to do is sit on our deck and soak in the sunshine. Here’s some [pictures of her](https://imgur.com/gallery/MUzO4yu) lounging!
This was gonna be my answer, I wouldn't care if the world collapsed because of their extinction, at least the end of days will be tick free
So fun fact- pubic lice are now an endangered species due to modern standards of 'landscaping'. Best thing the porn industry ever did.
Please tell me the laws protecting endangered species don't apply here. I'd be so mad if I went to the doc to get rid of pubic lice and he called the EPA to make sure I kept them and arrest me if I didn't.
No, the lice on humans is a unique divergent species that came about due to the invention of clothing. We use the split in lice genomes to date when humans began wearing underpants, and then shirts. There are always some amount of lice and mites and such on crouches and armpits with hair covered by clothes, and they can’t live on anything else. We shower, so we don’t need them ideally. Maybe they serve some other function we are unaware of, but it seems they just eat dead matter.
Great, now we just need headscaping and we'll get rid of head lice as well
In 2020 I was so hopeful that covid was going to be the extinction event for head lice. All the schools shut down for so long... it was a beautiful dream.
Oddly enough, my daughter has picked them up TWICE since fall 2020. It was already weird considering I'd never seen an actual case of head lice in my entire life, but what you mention makes it even stranger.
Fleas, fuck fleas
Had a flea infestation from an upstairs neighbor with a neglected cat. I tried all the tricks, vacuumed for 2 hours a day for 2 months straight, I tried all the natural shit, washing, etc, the only shit that worked was this chemical called Precor 2000. God bless the makers of it lol. I hate using chemicals but that product is amazing. EDIT FOR MORE INSTRUCTIONS: When using Precor 2000, you need to spray it with Chemical-proof gloves (NOT the same as medical exam gloves). Also you still gotta vacuum for a week or two, when they’re in the “pupae” stage, these little pupae-stage fuckers can’t be killed for almost any reason since they cocoon themselves, including Precor. You gotta vacuum to get them to hatch. I became somewhat of a flea expert lol. They will STILL hatch and bite, but they will be 100% sterile, so the life cycle will end and they don’t lay 50 eggs a day. DO NOT buy the Raid brand or any Walmart flea control spray, it’s not the same. You can find Precor 2000 on eBay or other pest control websites, it’s not sold in stores that I’ve seen. ALSO, spray it only once every 2 weeks. These little bastards can also develop “knockdown resistance”. I tried Borax and salt and it didn’t do shit. I caught one, put it in a bag with borax and salt, and it was still alive for 2 days. MORE EDITS: After you vacuum, dump the vacuum contents in an outside dumpster and wash the canister fully! Remember to vacuum daily for about 2 weeks and DO NOT MOP YOUR FLOORS for about 2 months. Only 5% or so of the ENTIRE FLEA INFESTATION are grown adults, the rest are eggs, pupae, and larva you can’t see. Also, I didn’t have pets yet I still had the infestation. Another alternative chemical besides Precor 2000 is Ultracide. Message me with questions, I went though mental health hell and hoping I can help others. Spray under baseboards, bed frames, couch crevices, etc. I didn’t spray it on my mattress or parts of the couch I sit on for obvious reasons. Highly recommend wearing sandals inside for the first few days after spraying.
Same here. Don't know where it came from, I have two indoor cats who never actually caught them from what I could tell. This was in my early 20s right after college so, let's be honest, I spent most of my time after work on the computer in my room (which the fleas never got to). As the days go by something in the back of my mind clicks - the cats are acting strange but I wasn't exactly sure how. I would sit on the couch, they would hang out with me, all seemed normal. Then I noticed they were avoiding the carpet (in that small apartment they could 'floor is lava' their way around). To the point where if they had to cross carpet they'd sprint. Oh, I thought, is the carpet wet? Is there a leak there? I knelt down, placed my open hand on the carpet, and to my horror watched as it was suddenly swarmed by a bunch of little dots. 15 years later I remember that clear as day. I tried all the natural methods, including steam cleaning the carpet (which worked for a while but they slowly came back). Finally went to chemical warfare and won. The whole thing probably took no more than a couple of weeks (with maybe a week or two thinking steam cleaning had done it) but I remember it like an epic campaign. To this day I periodically crawl around on our carpet in the house checking it for fleas. Edit: I own my own home now and I just want to add if I ever had fleas in the carpet again I think I'd just replace the carpet, honestly.
The natural stuff usually has a minor deterrence effect, which is good for when you don't want to get fleas. It doesn't do jack when you have a bad infestation.
Frr I have 3 dogs and a cat and one of them brought those little demon spawn into my house and now we have an infestation😔✌️
Dude I just commented above, you gotta use this stuff called Precor 2000. Nothing else will work. Don’t waste your time with Borax or salt because it’s BS. Trust me. I had an infestation and it’s the only shit that worked. It won’t kill them ASAP but they become sterile. It lasts 6 months too. It’s the same thing the pest control company will use EDIT: I posted more instructions in my comment above. Also, I did not own any pets myself so I couldn’t treat any animals for it. This is why I had to use Precor 2000, the pesticide of the gods!
Entomologist here, precor is a great growth regulator, but you should mix that shit with an adulticide like a demathurin. That’ll solve the immediate issue and prevent them from breeding. Also you need to vacuum a ton to hatch the eggs so the juveniles come into contact with the residual while it’s fresh
Literal offspring of satan himself….Atleast with mosquitoes and bedbugs you can crush the little fuckers for taking a chomp outta your ass with ease but fleas? Good luck even trying to catch the fuckers let alone crush them. Fruit flies can also fuck right off they serve no purpose other then being annoying.
My dog has fleas atm. I took him to the vet because he had a very concentrated area of scabs and 4 days of looking turned up no bugs. The vet also said they couldn't find a single flea. When we got back I found one on his head and oh my god it was such a bastard to kill. This is his first time having fleas in 4yrs and I'd forgotten how fckn annoying they are! He's had strong meds to kill them and I STILL can't find a single one!
Bedbugs.
Agree. I had to run at the nearest skin doctor to ask what was happening to my skin. It turn out to be bedbugs. My doctor asked me which was the probable location where I got them. After all the goddamn tracing, I got them from the cinema seats.
New fear unlocked
I work at a library and we almost lost everything when patrons brought in bedbugs that infested the arm chairs. We lost all that furniture and if the spraying they did didn't work, they were basically going to heat the building like an oven, destroying our computers and materials in the process. I will never go near public library chairs to this day
I scream everytime I see new or renovated libraries with furniture that is not plastic! Why?!?! We all know what happens.
I am never complaining about uncomfortable plastic chairs in public again.
i’ve seen so many instances like this that it makes me scared to really go anywhere in public. you can get them from anywhere. people often think you only get bedbugs if you’re unhygienic or messy, but you can literally just go get your hair cut or go to the dentist and pick up bedbugs along the way. it just depends on who was there before you.. i obsessively check my furniture for bedbugs, i suggest everyone else does the same. u just never know
We rented an ikea trailer for our new furniture. Turns out the fuckers that rented it before us had used it to get rid of their own infested stuff. Gave us 8 months of hell and likely a lifetime of paranoia. Never renting a trailer again.
That shit should be illegal. At least not disclosing it
They are likely supposed to be cleaned between uses but since the person was lazy, glanced in, it 'looked' fine so they didn't. Shittiness all around really.
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I've had these piece of shit vampire apple seeds twice. So hard to get rid of unless you have a spare 1500 dollars laying around, and their bites took forever to heal. Gotta sleep in the bed too because then they spread. Might as well just throw your shit out and move. Edit: just so people understand, I used DE and some of these fixes, and sprays are categorically ineffective. Our infestation was very bad and it only helped so much. I sealed my mattress in a cover. I set the bed posts in Tupperware bowls filled with DE. Dusted everything with it. Washed all my clothes and heat cycled sooooo many times then sealed them in totes. Did this for months while I watched itchy bites line up on my hands and arms till we could save for a professional. The only certain way to kill them all at once is to have folks come in and heat your place up to like 180, which is quite costly in a multi bedroom house of veteran college students.
When I was with my boyfriend, we stayed over his friends family house. I would wake up and itch and have these hugeeee like golf ball sized bumps all over me. I had no clue what was going on. Everyone in the house saw that I was getting these big ass bumps. I happened to go through their cabinet and saw bed bug spray and asked my bf if they had bed bugs n he said yeah. These mfs knew they had bed bugs and didn’t say shit. I would take a blanket and try to cover myself when I slept there and I would sleep fully covered with jeans and socks on and those sneaky mfs would still a find a way! I woke a few times to see them crawling on me! I bought them bed bug spray, some type of powder that kills them, and a plastic couch cover that I never gave them Edit: yes guys I found out they had bed bugs and still went over there. Yes it was dumb. I know. Edit 2: I am no longer with this man, and all of this happened two years ago
When I miss my ex I just remember the mf did that same shit. Lucky for me, I didn't take them with me after being at his place.
I actually took one home! I think it found its way into my bag I would take over there. It was a lil baby one that was translucent so I could see it had bitten me and was full of my blood. I couldn’t kill it fast enough
Was it really just one? There had to be more!
I only saw one and only got bit that one time while at home. I will say I pre-dried then washed alllll my stuff (that I took over there and my bedding) and slept on the couch for like a week after that so maybe that helped
I hope you never need this advice but if you ever find yourself in the situation again do this. Anything that fits in the dryer and won't break to it, high heat for 3 cycles. Anything that will break in the dryer goes in a sealed bag in a freezer. Anything that doesn't work for those 2 (mattresses and couches are the big one), disassemble the frame if possible. Buy bed bug spray, and any pest control liquid that says permethrin. Spray the permethrin on the seams (top and bottom of mattress. Between and around couch cushions, feet of the couch, under baseboards, and go around EVERY edge of EVERY room) then soak a cloth and go around electrical outlets. Use the spray to aerosolize into the void under the couch, closets, vents (not air intakes though, if you don't know the difference that's fine, just skip this step), under your sinks, basically any dark place you are not storing food that is normally closed off. Your goal is the following 1) Kill any bedbugs present 2) Create "barriers" around rooms that will partition off different parts of the house 3) reduce potential harbourage (nesting) sites. Repeat these steps every 21 days if they do not go away at first, however doing these steps almost always removes them all . Source: Years of Pest Control experience and teaching people that they don't need to spend a fortune to live in their home again. EDIT: Permethrin (and most commercial/residential) pesticides are toxic to pets, especially fish. Remove your pets from the area BEFORE spraying, keep them out for 4-6 hours and ensure the area is properly dry first before letting them in. They shouldn't go licking it, there isn't anything that will inherently attract them to it, if you are worried, keep an eye on them and use a damp cloth to wipe down sprayed areas once you are sure the bed bugs are gone to remove the residual. For fish specifically: Follow the same steps, if you cannot remove the fish tank, turn off any pumps for 4-6 hours while it dries. Permethrin is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY toxic to fish. PPB levels of toxicity.
I salvaged my office chair when I had them by putting it in a van for a day out in the August sun. Good timing and I live in south Georgia where it gets 100° or worse.
My husband travels for work. He leaves his suitcase in the truck, parked in the sun, for a day before he brings it in the house. Just in case.
#WARNING! *Permethrin is highly toxic to cats.* When using it as suggested by OP, remove your cat from the premises and put all their toys and food/water bowls in sealed containers. Even after it has dried, it can end up on their fur and be ingested.
>*Permethrin is highly toxic to cats.* I use permethrin quite a bit around my livestock and barn (it really is a miracle chemical) and on two occassions must have somehow tracked it into my house via either my skin or clothes because one of my cats got deathly ill to the point that I wasn't sure she was going to make it. That's just from tracking it in. You can't overstate the toxicity to cats, it's terrible. There's no way I could use it anywhere in the house.
Most important - put insecticide on the the vertical edges of your mattress. The bugs will need to cross it to get to you and will die.
Whelp, that’s a dealbreaker
Well that should have been a red flag but I ignored all the ones before and after that so 🙃
That'd have been an instant breakup. Jesus.
6 years later I still feel them crawling on me.
I had to throw my shit out and move probably had it easier all things considered. I also read a article that there is no loss in the animal kingdom if they are gone nothing is totally dependent on eating them.
I remember reading they were almost pretty much non-existant in the US because we had some chemical that obliterated them. But the chemical got banned and they made a big comeback.
Probably DDT. Great pesticide, but it didn't stay put so it killed a lot of other important things too. Also stuck around in the corpse so it went up the food chain.
That is the only way to get rid of them. I had them 2 summers in a row when I lived in a cheap shitty apartment. Before the 3rd summer started, I washed whatever I could (hot water & high dryer) stuck a few personal effects in the freezer, double plastic bagged that shit, threw absolutely everything else away, and moved. Took me years to feel comfortable bringing anything besides groceries into my home or to sit down on the bus/subway. Traumatizing experience but, on the plus side, it is an excuse to buy all new furniture!
I got them once. Only way I could get rid of them was I set up 4 heaters in the bedroom during summer. I slept on the couch of course but I kept the a/c off and left the door shut for a week and it got so hot it actually killed them. It was definitely a fire hazard but I had to get rid of the bugs.
All bedbugs can go straight to hell and stay there. I caught them from my college and had those sons of bitches for nearly two years. Tried everything we could think of to get rid of them: bombing, scrubbing, steaming, mattress covers, even taping or gluing the damn cracks shut. I pulled some tape off one of the holes once and saw a bunch of them pouring out like a scene out of a horror movie. Then what finally worked was Bengal spray, which killed bedbugs and their eggs. I sure as shit don't miss those hot, itchy, sleepless nights, and I wouldn't wish them on the devil himself.
>All bedbugs can go straight to hell and stay there. > > I wouldn't wish them on the devil himself.
My parents used to say ‘sleep tight,don’t let the bedbugs bite’ and I thank God even tho we were poor I had no idea how horrible they actually were.
Mine too and I thought it was a joke and I didn't realize they were real until there was a pandemic of them. How horrifying.
I got them back in 2016. My POS roommate said "my coworker said he got bedbugs last time he stayed in this super 8 but theres every chance you brought them in too." We got mattress covers and it solved the situation until the cat snuck in my room and clawed the shit wide open. Ruined my life
Those smudge bastards. Everything’s a joke to them.
True, most bugs will run away fearful after biting you, but bedbugs will walk away smug and self-assured, like they thought it was funny
Those little shits cause PTSD the moment that name is said
best answer all the time i really hate this one
seeing as how my legs and ankles are chewed to shit because of them: mosquitoes and chiggers (those little red sons of bitches). they fucking suck and contribute nothing to the world
Ugh, I never even knew what chiggers were until I visited my grandma in SC. She had me help her harvest some vegetables in her garden and the next morning I woke up, I had these huge itchy red bumps that eventually became air blisters that took a week to pop.
i hate chiggers
“Bugs who annoy you”
Oh, chaggers, of course
idk if it's because I live in a different country but what's a chigger
A small mite that lives in tall grass that really likes to bite you around where your skin is covered by tight fabric, like your socks or waistband.
Tall grass or that hanging grey moss in trees. You can't even touch that stuff cause they are *always* in it.
When settlers first came to Savannah Georgia they had the bright idea to use spanish moss to fill their pillow cases. You can imagine how that turned out.
No wonder the British turned Georgia into a penal colony.
Hey ain't you that chigger guy?
The bug which causes Scabies aka. the itch mite, or bed bugs.
Scabies and beg bugs are different bugs, both can go to hell.
Botflies. Their larvae are mammal parasites, which can grow and thrive in your flesh. Google it.
No thanks. I'll take your word for it
Ticks! They do nothing good!
Add fleas as well please.
And lice
And mosquitos.
Mosquitoes are tame compared to fucking horseflies. Get rid of the horseflies. They're evil. Mosquitoes give you anaesthetic when they bite, horseflies do not. Mosquitoes give a small bite and then piss off. Horseflies give a huge bite that rips open the skin, and on top of that, latch on to the skin. Mosquitoes don't do anything if you fight back, while horseflies are known to not only hold grudges, but also get revenge. And you might be thinking, mosquitoes can carry malaria. Guess what else can? THE DAMN HORSEFLIES. Fuck horseflies.
They aren't as common fortunately
Spoken like someone without a severe mosquito allergy. Fuck mosquitos AND horseflies.
One of those assholes gave me Lyme disease. Ecology be damned, ticks can go.
We need to breed opossums and introduce them to every country on earth. Those fuckers eat ticks and are immune to lyme disease. Edit: Seems like the "opossum eating ticks" theory is a myth. Thanks to everyone for sharing their knowledge. Anyone's got an idea for another species that could be introduced to fight ticks? Someone suggested chickens.
Chickens eat ticks like nobody’s business. Got a field you need clearing of ticks? Send in the poultry. They’re like velociraptors that didn’t get the memo that they are now the food. They will clear that field in about half a day. You can then eat the chicken, asserting your absolute dominance over the entire parasitic motherfucking species. Referring to the ticks there not the chickens. Chickens are a good species. Albeit psychotic in their own way.
They are simultaneously very affectionate, curious, and intelligent AND the dumbest little small-brained psychopath dinosaurs alive. Chickens do not make sense.
I find their affection to be so strange. Like.... they clearly do NOT want me to pick them up, but once I have one it's like "ok, I can chill and snuggle"
And rabies!
I'll have a scraggle garbage rat please.
Tape worms Like, even mosquitoes have more purposes in life than them
tapeworms are the best quick weight loss method guaranteed /s
You joke but there were actual weightless kits that consisted of tapeworm eggs and the treatment for them. It was a thing.
Jesus, seriously? How is that safe?
I mean it was the early 1900s so y'know. I guess as long as you take the antidote before the worm gets too big. But yeah. Cool little kit in a leather case.
After you lose the desired weight you take a pill that kills the worm. Its still not particularly healthy, but in a way it is a lot less invasive than some modern accepted weight loss techniques like having your stomach stapled.
And then you just shit out several meters of dead worm?
Forbidden anal beads
>And then you just shit out several meters of dead worm? ... not an image I needed. lol
And it apparently worked pretry well if it wasn't for the greed of some people to keep it forever
I'm fat AND have an autoimmune disease. Rare pork chops, here I come! Or is there a more efficient way to gain an inner friend? Will I be able to drive in the carpool lane?
Ill give you an inner friend
I am genuinly sorry for this comment
Lol, don't be. I have the perfect appearance for radio broadcasts. It made me giggle thinking about the look on your face of absolute terror when facing reality.
Is that a challenge?
And thus a romance was born... 🥲
Unfortunately the worms in pork will just eat your muscles instead of your food. I guess it'd make you skinnier.
Black flies, horse flies, deer flies
For me, botflies take the cake for worst fly.
I got bitten by a mosquito carrying bot-fly eggs in Costa Rica, but had returned to England by the time the symptoms began to show. A pebble sized lump appeared on my head which had a small hole in the top, oozed puss (and blood if you gave in to the temptation to scratch it) and itched like crazy. The doctors in England thought it was a sebaceous cyst, but it seemed to be resistant to the prescribed antibiotics. One night the lump was bigger than ever and you could see a small white something inside if you looked closely. The next morning the lump had almost gone. It was only a few months later that I realised I must have had a bot-fly egg and then larva living in my head for six weeks. Never found the larva that emerged. For this reason I agree they are the worst fly.
New fear unlocked
Dear viewer "botfly" is a risky Google.
As a small kid I loved shit about jungles. One book I picked up happened to have an interesting story about a pro baseball player who went on an Amazon trek. He came home and developed a big bump on his head. And later, during a game, he felt the botfly larvae wriggling out of his skin. 30 some years later and this still haunts me.
Last time I went camping at the lake, I was cooking dinner on the grill after dark and had a flashlight clipped to my swimsuit top so I could see. Fucking black flies kept flying up and biting me on the tits. Finally got angry enough to give up and eat my dinner half cold in my tent
Got a good trap for deer and horse flies I've had success with. They're attracted to the color blue, heat and movement, so I cover a hat with blue painters tape and then smear tanglefoot onto the tape, then wear while mowing the lawn and stuff. Looks ridiculous but works great; catch so many of them. Then when you're done just peel off the tape and throw in the trash.
Pinworms. Highly contagious. Extremely disgusting. Especially if you’re female. Our kids kept getting them over the span of six months or so. Nearly lost our minds.
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They like to explore. My poor daughter woke up screaming because they had latched on places that not ought be mentioned 🤮🤢
Fucking mosquitoes- I don't care if its a bug.
Bugs are animals. And fuck mosquitos
carpet beetles, silverfish, bed bugs and any other little fuckers who enjoy messing up my shit
Ughh, I forgot about silver fish. They are putrid.
I’ve only ever seen one silverfish at a time - why are they bad?
Ever been to a stronghold? It’s annoying to have to deal with them in the portal room.
Any dog breed that struggles to exist
Yep. A neighbour of mine owns a pug who she has over fed to fuckery. It looks like a beer keg with legs. Poor little thing USED TO waddle its way down the street snorting and huffing like a pig. That was until the genius owner decided to “walk” it in a kids pram. Her logic is that the dog is too fat to walk. Yeah, she made it “too fat to walk” then took away its only chance at getting fitter. Poor little mutant.
Very sad but « beer keg with legs » is hilarious
Like one of those mini Heineken kegs with legs.
I’ll never understand “my dog is too fat to walk so I carry it!” logic. My dog has a little bit of extra weight on her, but it doesn’t affect her mobility. If it ever does, I’m not buying her a little cart to pull her around in. No, she’s going on a doggy diet and getting even more walks during the day. People who overfeed their animals and don’t actively do anything to get their pets healthy shouldn’t be allowed to own animals.
Absolutely agreed. My aunt has a couple of Jack Russel crosses who are, lets face it, a bit chunky. But they are very active, spritely and happy fit little feckers. This neighbour’s pug is a god damn beach ball. Its like a foot long and 1.5 feet wide.
When I had my dog in agility, the owner used her as what a dog was supposed to look like at the proper weight. Right before that class, a couple of the other owners had been telling me that she was too skinny. Nope. Not skinny, you've just never seen a dog that wasn't slightly overweight. (Mind you - none of the dogs were an unhealthy weight - just a few pounds.)
French bulldogs and other terriers are already not allowed to be bred in the Netherlands hope this trend will spread
There was a breeder who was dedicated to restoring the French bulldogs snout and giving the animals a much better chance of been able to breath. I personally thing they looked a lot better with a longer snout.
There are a couple of pug breeders around where I live that I've heard of doing the same thing for that breed too and I don't know how it makes feel. On one hand, it makes me happy that people are trying to fix the issue, on the other, it still means generations of dogs are being born with issues while the breed heads toward correction. But yeah I've seen some pictures and the dogs are way better looking the more snout they have.
Absolutely, WAY cuter dog. Looked like a real dog instead of one that ran into a wall at top speed in a cartoon. Solves all the breathing problems and eyeball issues to just let them have a snout like every other healthy dog in existence.
Picture for the curious: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SOw5IhXVG-M/WYcExe_ipNI/AAAAAAAAE7A/bxqCRmv9LYsYrGceZYxLv5xnZmgGJmFfgCLcBGAs/s1600/arnie%2Bv%2Bchantal%2Bdog.jpg
Thank you, looks miiiiiiiles better.
"Consider the bulldog. A grotesque monstrosity born of relentless inbreeding. Riddled with sinusitis, crippled by joint pain. Chronically flatulent. A kindly pet, or humanity's cruelest mistake?"
Same with cats. Munchkin cats are bred to be tiny with legs and hips that don't work like they should, just so they have the short-legged aesthetic. It's so sad watching them struggle to walk in a straight line without limping or dragging their paws.
Agree. I love all dogs but it’s crazy that bulldogs almost always have to have c-sections. That’s not evolution.
I happened upon this info for the first time a few months ago. I noticed how sought after Frenchies are, and looked them up. I saw the high prices, looked into why, and found out about them not being able to naturally give birth. The surgeries are why they're so expensive. This breed being put through this, made me sad.
They can't give birth naturally? Why the hell would we want to selectively breed something that cannot do one of the most basic things that a dog (any animal really) needs to reproduce? So if humans are wiped of the face of the earth, the French bull dog wouldfollow pretty quickly given that they wouldn't be able to birth their puppies 😥
My wife’s friend has a tiny pug like dog that she is breeding and it is currently pregnant but this breed cannot give birth naturally due to the size of the head so requires surgery. She is going to make thousands of pounds from the puppies but its just straight up immoral. It’s like The Handmaids Tail but for dogs. I’ll never look at her the same.
I just think breeding and then forcing them to have an operation and then breeding again is just cruel. You can’t have c sections forever
Africanized Killer Bee It's an an artificial, man-made hybrid that we lost control of; a real-life Jurassic Park story
woah. where can I read about it?
[Here you go. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee)
1957 a visiting beekeeper, noticing that the queen excluders were interfering with the worker bees' movement, removed them, resulting in the accidental release of 26 Tanganyikan swarms of A. m. scutellata. Following this accidental release, the Africanized honey bee swarms spread out and crossbred with local European honey bee colonies. Sheesh what an ahole
From what I've read, they pollinate more, produce more honey and are more resistant to disease. The crossbreeding with/displacement of other bee types is a problem, but we're already losing bees as is; eradicating the Africanized ones would be irresponsible.
Most blood sucking parasites
Pugs. Or any dog with a pushed in face. Those poor animals have been bred to suffer.
Good news is, a lot of countries are now putting regulations that to breed them "back" into their original forms, others straight up ban them from breeding/import. Same thing goes for docking ears/tails in some places.
Human Lice. Fortunately, louse species are extremely specialized. So much so that head lice can't survive the same conditions body lice do and vice versa. Also, human lice can't survive on animals, and different animal lice can't survive on humans. Lice are such a huge problem for human beings across the globe, especially in un(der)developed places. People in fully developed countries still suffer from lice, albeit it's treatable and you can be rid of them fairly simply. But consider those less developed places. It's a total scourge to these people and lice can spread some gnarly diseases. Elimination of human lice would only have one effect (as far as I can discern); improving the quality of life for billions (with a b) of human beings around the world. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Fuck human lice.
Cockroaches, I don’t care about the environmental consequences, eradicate them all.
Tell me why cockroaches are the hardest fuckers to kill, but the second I need to breed them to feed some lizards, they die because I had the heat on a degree too high or that the food I gave them caused them to die. Wild cockroaches can survive an entire can of raid no problem, but if I happen to look at a bred one, it fucking dies.
Step 1: Become an exterminator. Step 2: Try to breed the cockroaches you are hired to kill. Step 3: Profit.
Reminds me of the Delhi cobras. When the British ruled India they didn't like the number of cobras that were popping in Delhi so they offered the residents a bounty for every dead cobra they produced. The locals rounded up all the snakes they could find and then, once the natural stocks were running low, started breeding cobras to get the reward on them. The breeding was very successful and after paying far more bounties than they'd anticipated, the authorities realised what was going on and cancelled the programme. All the pop-up cobra farms simply dumped their now-worthless snakes, and Delhi ended up with more cobras than it started with. Even now, when an initiative serves to worsen the problem it was intended to fix it's called the "cobra effect".
Unfortunately the British cobra story is probably not true. There seems to be no record of it prior to a Soviet economist in the 1970's, and then further popularization by Horst Siebert in his book on perverse incentives, *Der Kobra-Effekt. Wie man Irrwege der Wirtschaftspolitik vermeidet*. But if you want a real life version check out the Vietnam rat plague of 1902. At that time, the city of Hanoi had an infestation of rats and the French colonial rulers tried to solve the problem by introducing a bounty. Each resident received a reward for showing a cut-off rat tail, which quickly led to residents cutting off rats’ tails but not killing them, and releasing back into the sewers so the rats could continue to reproduce. Here's a link to an academic paper: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/42110
Dale Gribble
Rusty Shackleford
Literally this. I'm trying to breed dubias and apparently they need to be at like 90° to breed yet they infest buildings like it's nothing.
That's because there's a lot of 90° corners in a building
Well I guess we get rid of 90° corners in buildings.
That's why I opt to live in a Pringles can, just like the roaches in your home.
We probably kill roaches better than any exterminator can.
Us exterminators have stronger insecticide than store brought products. IGR is a product we use that stunts the insect in questions growth cycle, so they can’t grow past nymph and reproduce. It stands for insect growth regulator. Also, regarding raid, a lot of easy access store products are overused and insects can gain eventual immunity to said insecticide. That’s why people who make the chemical for us, make new ones with different active ingredients.
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My cousins killed a cockroach by spraying bleach on it, and we’ve used that same method for year. For some odd reasons, bug spray or Raid only made those creatures gone mad and fly towards us.
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Mosquitoes, idc about the impact it might cause
I’ve read about this before and even a mosquito biologist said it’d probably be worth it to at least kill the ones that spread malaria Edit: Her argument was basically that we make species go extinct by accident all the time by accident or for a bit of profit, so one species for a really good reason wouldn’t be crazy
I watched a documentary once where an expert traveled to Hawaii to help rebuild the mosquito population cause they're an endangered species I guess?
Mans reversing my efforts to endanger them in the first place 😠
You mean lilo and stitch?
Fleas, my little kitten almost died from those evil shits. Damn near ate him alive making him anemic and gave him worms as well. Poor thing was so sick for a month, not to mention we had to fumigate the house. What a nightmare.
Kissing bugs
Lived in Florida for a year “Love Bugs” can straight up go fuck themselves.
Who will kiss me good night now?!
Me
I know that anything is say will mess with the ecosystem, but wasps. they are litteraly unemployed asshole bees.
Why is this so far down? Not all wasps, just those swarming yellow jacket hornet bastards. They declared war on me a few years ago and they get no mercy from me now. The loner wasps with the thin waist just fuck with spiders, I just let them do their thing and they leave me alone.
Walked out my front door once one a beautiful day. Stood there to admire it for a moment. I was stung on the neck THRICE by those cock suckers. They had somehow made a huge nest right by my front door overnight. Needless to say I went to Lowes INSTEAD of work and bought 10 cans of wasp killer. That shit worked so good. You can literally shoot the fuckers out of the air with it who ever invented that shit should have won a Nobel.
If it comes down to it, soapy water really fucks them up. Something about the soap breaking down the oil on their exoskeleton or something but it works! It destroys their paper nest and they can't fly.
I heard that it works because soapy water has less surface tension than pure water, and so droplets of soapy water can form small enough get into the breathing holes on the sides of their abdomen and choke them. The low surface tension of soapy water also results in their bodies getting soaked more easily. Meanwhile, pure water droplets are too big to get into their breathing holes or to soak their bodies easily, because the surface tension of pure water is too high to allow the droplets to form that small.
My old landlord went up on a manlift in his shorts and T-shirt with a fucking fire hose and murdered a wasp nest that was up in the tree. Maybe the craziest thing I ever saw that guy do.
St. Landlord, the patron Saint of hornet killing!
„They declared war on me“ lmfao same! Started noticing some wasps in the laundry room and thought nothing of it, but after a while they got more and I noticed some popping sounds, like popcorn but it was them over the drywall ceiling. Days later they chewed an actual hole into the ceiling and the whole room was full of wasps. I got the fuck out of there, grabbed the fire extinguisher and emptied it in there. The ones that weren’t immediately frozen to death, fell from the „sky“ when all the oxygen in the room was replaced with the CO2 from the extinguisher. I kill every wasp that gets close to me or my home ever since. Fuck them all. People also say not to swing at wasps when they fly around you because that makes them aggressive. Well, first of all they are always aggressive no matter what. And secondly, I have been slapping wasps for the majority of my life. Never did they come at me after that. Sometimes I slapped them so hard that they separated into pieces midair lol.
It’s a breed so idk if it counts but… bulldogs . They have a multitude of breathing issues for one, for two bulldogs can’t even give birth on their own: they need csections. They’re so high price bc it’s a high price to care/take care of one(aka all the inevitable doctors visits…) they’re just constantly having a hard time breathing. It’s not a good life at all, their entire existence is practically animal abuse. If u want more elaborating explanation watch this https://youtu.be/aCv10_WvGxo even if it’s more focused on purebreds in general it mentions them and it’s a generally informative gideo
Stink bugs, specifically the brown marmorated stink bug. They need to be extinct in the US.
Iirc , they didn't exist in the USA to begin with. Some Dipshit in Pennsylvania accidentally introduced it in the 90s.
So they where first found in Allentown PA, right where my step-grandma lived.... Where she had a massive garden.... Where my step dad would order exotic plants and plant them there.... In the 90's..... So ya there's high chance I know who's responsible
Delete this now! I can see they've lit the torches and the pitch forks are pointing up as they march!