The Southern Home Bestuary: Living with our critter friends and enimies.

Small flesh-eating beetles        Harmless          These too will pass  

 As a child I slept with my toys and pets, as a man I slept with my wife now, as an aging widower, I prefer to sleep alone. In recent weeks I found that I had new bed partners in the way of black elongate dots that appeared to be fecal pellets from something being dropped from my fiberboard false ceiling.

Flesh-eating beetles on a marble top - about one per square inch.

 Closer inspection with a 10-power hand lense revealed that these were actually small brown beetles. A call to Clemson University’s  ”Bug Guys” elicited the opinion that these were likely members of a large group of undistinguished small beetles that were food specific. Among these were cigarette beetles, those that fed on fur and others that were carrion feeders. They postulated that I had a dried dead rat somewhere, and the insects were feeding and raising their young on it.

  As readers of previous posts will recall, I did have a problem with wood rats; and one had apparently died in the walls of the house or in the false ceiling. I had the ceiling panels taken down and that area cleaned. No rat was found. I used another “bug bomb,” and hoped for the best.

 No luck. I have still have them, but in fewer numbers. Ultimately they will exhaust their food supply and, having accomplished their biological function, will die out.  As they eat only dead flesh, I have no fear of being eaten alive in my bed, although this would make an interesting plot for a short story.

  The moral here is to always make your bed. You never know what may crawl, or fly, between the sheets with you.

Fleas   Obnoxious, sometimes deadly     Repell       Exclude      Remove

  Blood-sucking parasites are not among most people’s favorite creatures. Ticks are considered frequently considered so disgusting that they are not

A few of thousands of ticks on an African Cape Buffalo.

 mentioned in “polite society,” as if ignoring them would make them go away. This is unfortunately not so.

 The Southern woods are filled with ticks and every woodland animal will host them. Some ticks are specific to a group of animals, but some species will try us out too. This is where the problem lies because viruses carried on the tick’s mouth parts can infect us. The “star” tick, for example, is the vector for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. and deer ticks carry Lyme Disease.

  Sometimes dangerous bites can be administered by tiny “seed” ticks that are about the size of a grain of sand. Once, on an African hunt, I was covered by hundreds of them. In Georgia a friend, who was a surveyor, died as a result of massive number of bites. I know of others who have had long debilitating diseases of the muscular and nervous systems from tick bites.

 I have had African Tick Fever which was promptly treated with a powerful antibiotic. This particular tick nailed me under the watch band. Lyme disease is transferred by deer ticks. As I commonly hunt and skin deer I wear clothing that has ankle ties and frequently wash and inspect myself. Very often I can feel the larger ones crawling on my skin and remove them.

 DEET containing repellents work and are a general preventative. Mechanically removing them from your dogs will also make them more comfortable. I drop the ticks into a rubbing alcohol-water solution. For those on me, I usually use a knife blade and pressing the tick against the blade slowly pull until it releases. I then disinfect the bite site with alcohol. If the bite area does not quickly heal, it is prudent to consult a physician and get started on antibiotics. Most tick diseases are relatively easy to treat at the outset, but may be very difficult to treat once neurological or other symptoms develop.

Fleas                                   Obnoxious                               Control populations

 The common black dog flea is not only causes my dogs to be

"I got fleas. You got fleas. All God's chillen got fleas," Persiphone.

miserable throughout much of the summer months, but are particularly troublesome when they move inside. One obvious solution is to not let dogs into the house, but I will have my dogs in with me, fleas or not. We battle these things together.

 The most effective thing to use inside a house is a canned flea spray designed for area treatment. There are room foggers, but this puts the poison on all surfaces and much is waisted because the fleas only live in the carpet and near floor areas.  It also helps to vacuum prior to spraying and twice a week during the summer. All interior dog beddings are washed once a week.

 Outside fleas hide in dry soils and grasses and jump onto the dogs, and people, as they walk by. A good test is to go outside wearing a set of light colored trousers and do an inventory on the numbers of fleas you have sticking to the lower parts of your trousers. Outside areas can be sprayed by any pest-control firm, but there must also be a simultaneous treatment of both the house and the dogs.

 My hounds, actually mixed-breed Labs, do not much enjoy their treatments with “eu de flea spray.”  As I apply it I comb it through their fur which increases the probability of it contacting, and killing, any adult fleas.  After an initial treatment, it is usually necessary during the summer months to repeat the interior, exterior  and dog treatment cycle again in about two weeks.

 Topically applied anti-flea preparationsthat are applied about every 30 days ( they  last only about 20-days on my dogs)  help, but they can be overwhelmed if the in-house and outside flea populations are high. If your pet commonly has blood-red granular ”dirt” (actually dried blood)  next to the skin, the fleas are there and breeding on him.   

 Spraying or bathing the dogs, by itself, gives them temporary releaf; but they quickly pick up another population of fleas the instant they go outside.

 To reduce the number of flea bites on you, the best preventative is to always wear socks. An easy way to trap fleas is to take a piece of strapping tape, stick them on it and then fold it over. Fleas are strong. They will often escape if not stuck on both sides.

Red or Paper wasp   Sometimes deadly    Remove from conflict areas

 The red wasp is common throughout the Southeastern U.S. This is a

A nest full of large agressive red wasp inside a shed.

paper wasp in that it builds paper nests in dry protected spots such as under the eves of houses and anywhere  they have protection from wind-driven rain. These nests can be huge and may contain more than a hundred individuals, although all start with a single pair of wasps.

 As more nesting cells are added and the larvae hatch new cells are added throughout the growing season until first frosts when the adults are killed and the eggs in the cells are dormant. As they pupate they feed on insects (these may be spiders or caterpillars, depending on the species). Any spell of warm weather during the winter brings on a hatch, and this can kill an entire colony if repeated warmings and chillings cause premature hatching.

 Red wasps are particularly aggressive if their nest are disturbed and with chase and sting anything nearby. This is particularly troublesome for those who are allergic to ant, wasp and bee stings as this causes restrictions of breathing and can result in death. For such individuals, it is vital to have an antivenom kit on hand and rush to the nearest emergency room. The kits have a limited shelf life, so check their expiration dates at least every year. Each year people die from stings.

 A good preventative is to never reach where you cannot see. Nonetheless any person who is actively doing things around a southern farm is likely to be bitten once every few years.

 Canned sprays are available for wasp that may project for several feet. These will kill wasps the colony and cause any remaining survivors to relocate their nest.

  Toads and frogs                       Move out of harm’s way

 With the spring rains, we had an unusually large crop of new toads

Toad warming on the edge of a burn pile.

and frogs. One of the more common is a large toad that grows to be almost three-inches long. They have a hard time getting by in dry weather, but burrow deep into the ground to escape the heat and come out after dark. They manage to survive by taking insects after dark and on dew droplets.

  Like reptiles, toads like their creature comforts. This was illustrated to an unusual degree when one of my medium-sized yard toads approached my burn pile. Only a few hours before flames had been 12-feet high, and the heat was so intense that you could not stand within ten yards of the blaze. There was still a bed of very hot coals in the center of the pile.

  I noticed a toad hopping up onto the pile. I moved him off only to find that he soon returned. Some how he apparently knew how close he could get without becoming a toad crisp. For as long as the burn pile was warm, he apparently enjoyed the heat. I don’t know if all toads are this hedonistic, but this one was.

Whitetail deer         Thin numbers during season         Consume

Thinning deer provides good eats and helps the environment.

  Eating away at almost anything in the surburiban landscape, whitetailed deer are increasingly raising the ire of homeowners not only as shrub, plantings and garden destroyers but as a real hazzard to drivers. Each year there are over 100,000 accidents reported in the U.S. from deer-vehicle strikes and approximately 10,000 injuries and 100 deaths. Other negatives include the facts that deer ticks are vectors that may carry Lyme disease and rut-crazed bucks can, and have, attacked people.

  While most people don’t take such a radical view as to want  all deer  dead,  there is a need to control populations in confined or densely populated areas where large numbers of adverse deer-people encounters may be expected. For me a hunter, the obvious answer is to shoot a few every hunting season and consume them. I am fortunate that I live such a distance from anyone that I may use bows, crossbows or firearms to take my deer.

 For most people using firearms is out of the question, but there is the potential for using bows or crossbows from elivated stands to safely and quietly harvest deer. Because the hunter is always shooting down, this removes almost any possibility of an errant arrow going to some unintended location. A problem arises that even lung-shot deer will very often travel 30 yards, which may be onto another landowner’s property.

 It is often a good plan for those who own adjoining lots to form a hunter’s consortium, agree as to where the stands should be placed and that hunters can follow-up their deer onto others’ properties. It is nice if any deer taken is processed and the wrapped meat divided up among  the members who want it – even among those who do not, or cannot, hunt.

For more information on Backyard Deer Hunting consult the author’s blog with that title under hoveysmith.wordpress.com which will also tell about others author’s books such as Crossbow Hunting and Practical Bowfishing.  Backyard Deer Hunting  takes the reader through all of the steps from taking the hunter safety program to 50 recipes for cooking deer and other wild game. For a look at my outdoor books go to www.hoveysmith.com.

Bats       Potentially sickening        Exclude

 Bats are ecologically helpful, although not very attractive, creatures that feed on night-flying insects and  remove large numbers of flying bugs from the Southern air.  These flying mammals very often nest in colonies in old houses if they can find some dark places to shelter. Their bodies are compressible so they can get in under vinyl sidings, singles, through gaps in the weatherboarding, and the joins between chimneys and the house siding.

  The bats that make colonies are females. In the Summer they have their young. The numerous droppings that they leave can be the host for airborne fungi including those that cause histoplasmosis.  Depending on the house, you might host hundreds of bats. 

  The way to discover if you have bats is to use your nose. If they start to accumulate guano, you can smell it outside of the house, in attics and perhaps even on back porches.  They can also be seen leaving the house immediately after sunset when their exit points may be spotted. The only effective way to dealing with them is to exclude them. Moth balls may serve to help keep them out early in the season, and is worth a try to put these into the nearest places that you can reach.

 At Whitehall we once took off and replaced all of the siding and replaced it, in an effort to exclude the animals. This exclusion is best done in mid-winter after they have migrated south. If you do it while they are still there, the typical result is that they just find another way in. It is almost impossible to seal every hole in an old house.

  I put on a face mask, or even a gas mask, to vacuum up their droppings when I can get a hose to them. The best over-all approach is to discourage them when they arrive in the Spring and exclude them in the Winter. If you have got them during the Summer you are fairly well stuck with them.

 A bat will occasionally get into the house with you. I usually put a bunch of rags on the end of an arrow and shoot them with a kids’ bow and then take them outside if I cannot net and transport them. Bats can be rabid. It is best to take care to avoid bites, and kill and burn any that act strange.

Dung Beetles      Big and ugly but harmless    Ignore

Whitehall Dung Beetle

I am sure that most people remember the friendly fresh-eating beetles from the Mummy movies. These things swarmed and moved inside of your body munching along  with great rapidity. Well I have healthly-sized black beetles too.

I find a few a year dead or dying on the carpet. These are black, nearly two-inches long, about half as wide and have horns. There are good-sized wood-eating beetles in the South too, but fortunately these are not among them.

These feed and breed exclusively on and lay their eggs in dung. That is only half-way O.K. At least that means that they do not feed on me or my house – just on the droppings that my other coinhabitants leave around. Things like birds, bats and rats supply food  for them. As long as I have dung beetles that means that I must also have, or have recently, had somethings that leave sufficient droppings for them to feed on and breed in.

They have their part to play in the biological cycle. While not as obvious as the colorful June bugs, that are also dung feeders,  they are interesting beasties to have around were it not for the fact that they feed on the droppings of some of  Whitehall’s  more obnoxious inhabitants.

Common mice   Suppress the population  Traps and sticky boards

When there is a vacant place in any habitat what frequently happens is that another species moves in to occupy that niche. At Whitehall, my 1790s home, I had finally discovered a way to successfully trap and remove a family of wood rats that had cohabited with me. It was not so much that I minded sharing with the critters, but the things persisted in running around all hours of the night and moving a sash weight behind my bed that sounded like a Chinese gong.

Sorry, guys; but you have got to go. Ultimately I trapped three adults and two juvinals with Haveaheart traps. That cured that problem.

A couple of nights after I had the last successful trapping I was making a midnight run to the bathroom. Coming back through my dark hall, I felt something stick to the bottom of my bare foot. I could not think what that might be until I arrived in my bedroom where there was some light. This was a sticky board that I had put under a piece of furniture with a live mouse attached. I had apparently exchanged 1-pound rats for 1-ounce mice.

If I have got to have one or the other I had rather have the mice than the rats. At any rate that was a new experience for me. Never before had I walked around truly footmoused. I am just glad that he was in no position to bite me.

Black Snakes and similar species – Ignore

Although not the black snack mentioned this rat snake is commonly killed as being poisonous when it is not. It is now in a defensive posture, but will go about its business if left alone.

During the Spring a young man’s fancy is suppose to turn to love. Well, we aren’t the only ones impacted in such  manner.

When mowing the yard a few days ago I noticed a dead limb had fallen from one of my cedar trees. Like the typical southern cedar, this limb had no bark and  was a smooth leafless stick about 7-feet  long.

On my next pass around my four-acre yard, there was not one limb, but two. The other limb was moving. It  a black snake about 7- feet long and 2 1/2-inches in diameter. This was the largest black snake that I had ever seen. We also have an indigo snake, an endangered species and is even larger, but this was a  huge black snake.

Only the day before I had encountered two black snakes mating, so it was apparently the time of year for them to get that done and make more black snakes.

One cannot tell too much about the mental state of snakes, but this big snake was moving with speed and apparent purpose towards the stick. I can only surmise that it was looking for love, and he thought he had found it in that this limb was almost the same size.

When he reached the stick he laid his head on top of it and used his tongue to test the scents.  If a snake can ever be said to sigh in disappointment, I believe this one did. Apparently grievously disappointed, it reversed back onto itself and slowly returned  to the woods to continue its search for a like-size  partner.

He was looking for love, and this time he was disappointed. My hope is that he will succeed, and I wish the same for all of us.