So far, in the last couple of months, the house has been invaded by bats, mice, box elders, house centipedes, and now…
Ants.
I can’t wait to see what moves in next. No, wait - I can.
Hmm, being at the southwest corner of Michigan, I’d say you have to look foreward to a myriad of beetles, spiders (hey it gets cold out there) and perhaps a few other assorted creatures with more legs than you.
I’ve still got box elders, though not as many. At the bank the other day, a woman behind me nonchalantly flicked one off my shoulder. Bastards.
Well I’ll be damned.
Having no idea what a “box elder” was, I did some searching. At first, all I could find was the “box elder tree”, but I don’t think you had one of them on your shoulder.
Then I found pics of the box elder bug, and was very surprised. I thought they were lightning bugs. I mean, they look a fair amount like them. That’s why I didn’t have any problem with them when I’ve been finding them all over the place in my house.
Meh…still, according to the cites I found (and personal experience), they don’t make a mess, or bite, or do anything destructive, so I’ll continue letting them live.
Of course, the cats will continue to use them as chew toys.
They don’t do anything really destructive, really.
But around here, they show up in hordes. The side of my house can be covered in them at times. More of a pain in the ass really. At night while trying to read, the tink tink of them dive bombing the light is distracting at best.
They are great food for the cat, and the times when they are the heaviest, you can’t sweep them up fast enough.
Giggles at the thought of running around with a tree on her shoulder.
The house centipedes are also harmless, AFAIK, but boy howdy, are they ever creepy.
Yes they are creepy. The ones in my house are even more full of bristles and grow up to 5 inches long. We call them “walking carpet remnants”.
I don’t mind the box elders too much, until they swarm, then they’re just gross. Like maggots. One maggot is cute, but bunches of them, nuh uh.
What are those teensy little flying black things? If it was summer and I was outside, I’d say they were noseeums, but it’s fall, I’m indoors, and these don’t bite. They just want to fall into my coffee.
I just got back from 2 weeks in Ames, Auntie, and I don’t recall having seen such an onslaught of box elder bugs in many a year. You could hardly keep them out of the house, even with the doors and windows shut.
The centipedes are predators. Shouldn’t they be eating the ants?
Though frankly, I’d rather have the ants ANY day than have a single centipede, ever. Gawd I hate those things.
My favorite (!?) fall fauna is the delightful vinegar fly, sometimes called a fruit fly. If you’re having a plague of them in your kitchen, be sure you put a cork in that open bottle of wine. There’s nothing quite like having to pour your glass of Merlot through a tea strainer…
But the Asian lady beetles weren’t too bad this year.
I hope someone took you to Aunt Maude’s for dinner – best food I’ve had since I lived in Seattle.
I thought that, too… until they started harvesting the crops around our house. Then they showed up in droves.
I hate those things. They bite, and they STINK.
Preview is my friend. :rolleyes:
I meant “…until the farmers started harvesting the crops …”.
I’m kinda having a bad day.
Don’t they? When I saw the combine in the field behind our house, I braced myself for the invasion, but it didn’t happen. Usually I’m vacuuming them up by the hundreds three or four times a day – I even do it outside by the doors (the neighbors laugh at me) – but this year, I didn’t have to do it once.
But we’ve had a cooler than usual fall, and I think that helped.
We usually get an influx of crickets at this time of year. The poor things come into the house looking for warmth, and they are promptly dismembered by our cats. Almost every day I find a legless insect torso or two writhing around on the floor. I wish the cats would eat what they catch, but once the hopping stops, the kitties go elsewhere looking for excitement.
Ugh! Those asian lady beetles are forcing me to empty out my ceiling lights every other day. It’s worse than my porch lights at the end of the summer. The cats are having a fantastic time though.
I’m envious… I wish I could say that. There are times that just walking out to my car is akin to running a gauntlet.
Maybe there are cycles, and the invasion is winding down. That might mean next year they won’t be so bad where you are. We can hope! 
Pocito, my cats won’t touch them, darn it. The dog tries to catch them in his mouth, which plays hell with the table lamps.
In my area, at least, the multi-colored Asian lady beetle population is directly tied to the soybean aphid population. Lots of soybean aphids = Lots of lady beetles, and the converse is true as well. It fluctuates from year to year, so what happened last year doesn’t have any bearing on what happens next year, alas.