–Just curious.
If the spider is reasonably prim and proper looking and it’s not harassing me, it gets trapped in a discarded water bottle and eventually released. If it’s frightening or annoying, it dies.
I’ve never seen a cockroach, and I hope I die ignorant. I’d probably resort to arson if I had them.
Ants get poisoned.
Spiders: huntsmen and other safe spiders are fine. Redbacks and whitetails get squished.
Cockroaches: get squished.
Ants: powder barriers, boiling water, poison, squshing. Whatever works.
Kill everything except spiders since spiders eat other bugs, and if you have a cat the cat takes care of the spiders.
Spiders are put out, everything else die! die! die! (I’ve never had roaches, though, knock on wood) My method of dealing with centipedes has been labeled “cry and kill” by my friend Danny. God, I hate those things.
I love insects, have been fascinated since I was a kid. Never saw a bug that startled me in the least. (Except for house centipedes. I can match their speed, but in the opposing direction.) Those creatures which are opportunistic and multiply exponentially can afford to take a hit in their numbers. I have zero moral dilemma with elminating roaches, most ants, and foreign invasive species, though I use chemical warfare only as a last resort.
I don’t have a problem with letting bugs live if they aren’t bothering me, but my sister does. I never see ants, and all the cockroaches around here seem impervious to the bait, so the only thing that ever works is what works with spiders: death by crushing.
And, no, I don’t let things outside. They’ll just come right back in.
Spiders I try to catch and release, unless they find their way onto me. Then it’s instant squish with whatever’s handy.
Moths, ladybugs, and butterflies get a free pass.
Roaches get squished, poisoned, burnt, whatever it takes to kill the buggers. This trailer I recently moved into is infested with the infernal things, and I’ve already spent $30 on bait trying to rid of them. It’ll probably take another $60 to $90 to get rid of them completely. I would call out an exterminator, but I’ve used them in the past and they’re not worth the price.
Flies get the fly ribbon treatment. To many get into my house in the spring and summer to not use them.
I am SO tempted to post a link to a close up of a cockroach.
Anyway, mostly what we do is point out the bug to the cats, who usually will take care of it. We’ve had a few infestations at the old house, where we had to fumigate the house (DIY bug bombs). I draw the line at neutron bombs because I’d like to stay on good terms with the neighbors, and because I’d like to live in the house again. But only because of that.
I hate spiders, but as much as I find them creepy, I try not to kill them in most situations, especially big buggers like Huntsmen. Or Huntsmans. Or whatever it is.
Other critters don’t bother me too much, unless they are really intrusive. I’m lucky enough to not have ever had a cockroach infestation. There are ants living under my porch, and wasps somewhere in my walls; I probably should do something about them, but they haven’t been a plague just yet.
Anything that goes clickety clack, or scuttley skittley, freaks me out a bit, but generally it’s live and let live.
That would freak me RTFO! Though I did catch/smack a roach once and contained it under a pickle jar so i could look at it up close and cure myself of my FEAR and LOATHING. gave myself nightmares. Those things do not die under the smack of a shoe or newspaper they have to be beaten to death and then the guts must be cleaned up
Palmetto bugs, they’re the only thing I don’t miss about South Florida along with those wierd albino geckos that used to invade my room (going after cockroaches I’m sure).
Junebugs in Michigan are the closest thing I’ve seen to cockroaches - good god almighty thank goddess for winter and her ability to put the bugs to bed.
Cockroaches and ants, both die by any and all means available. Everything else is more than welcome as long as they stay out of my way.
Any bug that invades my home space is subject to an immediate death sentence, with exceptions for more deserving sorts (the occasional moth or spider, for instance). Outdoors it’s basically live and let live, except for fire ants (when I lived in fire ant country). Boiling water, hand grenades, flamethrowers, whatever it takes for them. Oh, and yellow jackets too, except it’s harder to boil those.
Spiders are allowed to live in my house if they generally stay out of sight, remain below a certain size (differs for spider type), and stay off the ceiling. If they’re on the ceiling my husband can reach up to get them and squish them in a tissue.
Never had cockroaches (knock wood) but I have seen places that are infested and I know that you should just nuke from space and rebuild elsewhere.
Sugar ants are fairly easy to get rid of with Terro, but carpenter ants require liberal applications of RAID!!
I like spiders, so I tend to leave them alone unless they’re freaking someone else out.
Thank God I’ve never had roaches, but if I did they’d be terminated with extreme prejudice and also I’d probably move.
I get plagued with both carpenter and little red ants every summer, and bust out the bug bombs, Raid, ant traps, and plasma cannon.
If anyone’s got an effective voodoo curse for ants, I’d love to hear it. It’d be fun sticking pins in a voodoo ant, or even better raise an army of ant zombies to do my bidding.
The poll didn’t accept my answers (this browser has some weird issues) but ants get destroyed at all costs. Never had roaches but I’d treat them the same.
Spiders I tend to ignore as long as they’re laying low. When one decides to make a spectacle of itself, I try to catch & release.
They die. They all die. It’s a combination of Raid and squishing for most bugs, but for ants I need to be patient and use the bait to make sure the poison gets back to kill them all.
We’ve got ants in the walls because it’s an old house, and they are currently exploring the kitchen. Bright side: I’ve had to keep the counters clean. Bad side: there are ants in my damn kitchen. The bug guy we had over said never to use sprays on them because you’ll only kill a few, and those who are split off from the group might go start a new colony. I bought liquid bait, and while it does work, it’s not quick, and initially attracts tons more ants to the scene, which squicks me out.
Agreed that they all must die.
Its a very simple law: my house is mine, not theirs. They can live in the garage, and in the sheds, and as long as they don’t scare me, I won’t kill them. The house however is meant to be a bug-free zone. Gardens are wide open, that’s shared space and while I won’t go out of my way to avoid killing them, I also try not to go out of my way to kill them.
I am in the buggiest work office I have ever seen, I constantly have spiders rapelling down my walls, millipedes crawling around, etc. I am seriously mind-boggled that they don’t do anything more about the bug problem here, even with my whining about it.
brown wolf spiders and anything bigger than the palm of my hand = squished, or I throw my steel-toed Doc Martens at it until I hit it.
ants = just smoosh 'em
cockroaches = spray can of Raid until they flip over belly up. Then toss 'em.
Amusing anecdote:
Many moons ago, when I was but a wee pup, Mom took my sister and I to Gramma’s house. Gramma lived about 45 minutes away, and to me, this seemed like a really long road trip. So I brought a blankie and made a tent in the backseat by draping it across the backs of the front seats. So I’m lolling about in my backseat car tent and I look up at the roof of the car. I spot this enormous 12-foot (okay about 4") grasshopper, all green and juicy, INSIDE the car. Looking at ME.
Without uttering a coherent word or giving my poor mom any warning at all, I let loose this horrible blood curdling scream that sounded like someone had just lopped off my leg with a big axe. Mom screeches to a halt, pulls over, and jumps out of the car to rescue me from the backseat. I manage to stammer out “Bu- Buuh- BUUUUUUUUG!” and point to the grasshopper. I’m crying hysterically and freaking the fuck out in general. My mom is shouting to my sister, “Comfort her!” and my sister is sitting there in the front seat giggling at me with a big WTF is wrong with her grin. I’m paralyzed with fear and will not move from the backseat.
Mom digs into her purse, comes up with about 1,000 tissues, grabs the grasshopper and puts it underneath the car tire, making sure I can see where she’s putting the bug. This was actually the WORST thing she could have done, because it’s not really the bugs I hate… it’s the crunching squishing sound they make when you smoosh 'em. So I cried all the rest of the way to Gramma’s house, thinking about that poor grasshopper all smooshed into mom’s car tires.
If she’d have just set the damn thing free, I probably would have recovered a little quicker.
To this day, I cannot smoosh a bug bigger than an ant. I hate the sound and palmetto bugs make a hell of a mess when you smoosh 'em. So I tend to go with the catch-and-release policy or spray with poison and scoop 'em up after they stop twitching.
Smaller spiders I just let 'em be. They eat cockroaches, so it’s fine with me if they want to live in the corners of my house.
I voted for “trap and eject” with spiders, but really it’s usually “live and let live, especially if they’re small, or one of those cute wolf spiders, or up in a corner of the ceiling, or in the basement, which is kinda creepy anyway. They eat the worse bugs.” This practice greatly distresses my sister, who is phobic, and I have actually hired someone to clean the house and specifically evict all spiders before she comes to stay with us.