# What do you do when you find a small but dangerous animal in your house? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 2, 2009, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153 "2009-02-02T21:27:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2009, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/61 "2009-02-05T22:02:44Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I wouldn’t be so sure… Statistically, over the course of history, Flea probably has a heck of a lot more. Well, I don’t consider fleas animals… Still, if you are going that route, Bacteria are really what are dangerous, not fleas… ---
**Author:** ![badbadrubberpiggy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/57b2e6/32.png) [@badbadrubberpiggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badbadrubberpiggy)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2009, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/62 "2009-02-05T22:44:16Z")
> [@Athena](#): > > When it comes to snakes, yes. I spent many happy childhood hours catching snakes in the grass. > > [House centipedes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutigera_coleoptrata), on the other hand, bring us both to our knees. Foul creatures, those. My cats like to dismember them, which is nice because then I don’t have to deal with them. We’ll leave house spiders be, and I happily held a millipede at the zoo once, but _house centipedes_? \<\\> ---
**Author:** ![dinoboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/65b543/32.png) [@dinoboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dinoboy)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2009, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/63 "2009-02-05T23:05:44Z")
OK, not exactly “dangerous” but we had a squirrel and a duck inside our house before (separate occasions :)) Trying to encourage either to go out the door and not hurt themselves/destroy things, however, was quite the chore! As for insects: I have only recently convinced my wife to not kill the centipedes (I usually relocate them to the basement) and she doesn’t bother the spiders. Our reaction has been mimicked by my 3 year old who happens to find these predatory insects more interesting than scary (which I’m glad for). ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/64 "2009-02-05T23:14:59Z")
> [@ianzin](#): > > I can’t say much about the other creatures you name, but black widows should be _way_ down on your list of worries and concerns. > > You are not prey, and you are not anything the spider can conceive of as an enemy. The spider has no interest in you. If it is aware of you _at all_, it just wants to stay out of the way of your big, dark shape and the disruptive air currents that you cause. > > You don’t really need to move or relocate a blackwidow, as it will do you no harm and it eats things that you don’t want around your home. However, if you really feel the need, it’s the easiest thing in the world to gently trap the spider in a glass, trying your best not to make this a traumatic event for the animal, and to grant it freedom outside your home in a suitable environment where it can get on with its life. > > Please, read **Lynne Kelly** ’s superb book on spiders when it is published (soon). It will diminish many of your fears and concerns, and it may lead to fewer spiders being needlessly disturbed and evicted. Plus, it’s just a great, well-written and enjoyable book (I am lucky enough to have an advance copy). [Nah.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwlNPhn64TA&feature=related) ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/65 "2009-02-06T00:53:04Z")
> [@Hal\_Briston](#): > > You [take pictures and start a thread about it](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=466299), of course. But are sheep really all that dangerous? Oh - you didn’t mean _ **that** _ thread. ---
**Author:** ![BestWifeEver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/838e76/32.png) [@BestWifeEver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BestWifeEver)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/66 "2009-02-06T01:22:05Z")
I lived in Phoenix for about 10 years. Never saw a scorpion, but my siblings and I would amuse ourselves by killing black widows by dropping bricks on them. That seemed to work just fine. No deadly bites to any of our human family but a poor hamster named Dale is suspected of dying from a spider bite. (Chip, his brother, unfortunately decided to hide in the dryer hose…not a pleasant discovery for mom) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/67 "2009-02-06T02:26:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, I don’t consider fleas animals… > Still, if you are going that route, Bacteria are really what are dangerous, not fleas… Fleas are unambiguously members of the animal kingdom, while bacteria unambiguously are not. And I’m not aware of _any_ definition of “animal” which includes scorpions and spiders but not fleas. ---
**Author:** ![BrandonR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@BrandonR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrandonR)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/68 "2009-02-06T02:43:43Z")
> [@BestWifeEver](#): > > No deadly bites to any of our human family but a poor hamster named Dale is suspected of dying from a spider bite. (Chip, his brother, unfortunately decided to hide in the dryer hose…not a pleasant discovery for mom) If you think that’s a bad demise for a hamster, you should have seen the spectacular ways my childhood pets liked to kill themselves. One hamster got so fat he became stuck in a tube, while another escaped only to somehow find his way into the bathroom wall where he would occasionally scratch from the inside… Until one day, the scratching ceased. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Carptracker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ac91a4/32.png) [@Carptracker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carptracker)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/69 "2009-02-06T03:28:50Z")
Wow, I appear to have had more experiences with (not very) deadly organisms in and around the house than most. We used to live in a stilt house in Corpus Christi Texas, right next to the Laguna Madre. The downstairs was walled in with breakaway walls, making a kind of garage under the house. Several times I found small rattlesnakes inside this area (although not in what could be called the living area, which was upstairs). I’d just throw them into a bucket and drive them away from the house and let them go. If any ever came back, I don’t know about it. We had small scorpions of some not-very-dangerous kind in all parts of the house, upstairs and downstairs on a semi-regular basis. I killed one in my son’s crib once, after my wife was about to drop him in. She saw the scorpion just in time, and freaked, and made me come and kill it. I was not as nice to the scorpions as I was to the snakes. I was only stung by a scorpion once, when I was surprised to find one in my shorts as I put them on. Bet you’ve never seen a guy get out of his shorts that fast. Ouch! It was a tender area, but I’d rank the sting as less powerful than a red wasp (which we also had regular troubles with). I once lost work after getting massively stung by red wasps when I inadvertently mashed a large, hidden nest in a tight place I could not get out of rapidly. For the wrong person, that would have been deadly for sure, but luckily I am not particularly sensitive. We also had coral snakes out back, but I never saw one for more than about 2 seconds at a time, and I never considered them dangerous. Our next door neighbor’s dog was bitten by a very large rattler (which my neigbor killed with a shovel, and we ate it.) Now here in Missouri, the wildlife is fun, but doesn’t seem to be quite as dangerous. ---
**Author:** ![lynne-42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lynne-42/32/3138_2.png) [@lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/70 "2009-02-06T12:22:55Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Sure, i’m aware of that. > > But if we don’t talk about the funnel-web as dangerous or deadly, then those word become pointless for basically _any_ discussion of spiders, because the funnel-web is always on the short-list in a discussion of “world’s deadliest spiders.” The fact is that spiders in general aren’t as dangerous as their reputation suggests, but i’m sure a funnel-web falls into the OP’s category. Yeah - grant that - you are quite right. But I always feel obliged to defend the creatures with whom I have now become irrationally obsessed. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/71 "2009-02-06T20:15:11Z")
> [@BrandonR](#): > > What _are_ the most harmful/deadly creatures one should worry about entering their home? According to the news, it seems to be ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends. ---
**Author:** ![Caractacus\_Pott](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@Caractacus\_Pott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caractacus_Pott)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/72 "2009-02-07T11:40:11Z")
Dyson, Hoover, Electrolux. If it fits in the hose, out it goes! ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/73 "2009-02-07T14:39:43Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > Coral snakes can be found all over the southern U.S. We have them in Arizona and in western New Mexico. Another species lives in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. And a third species can be found in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, along the Atlantic coast of North and South Carolina, and the entire state of Florida. Yes, and I believe that though they have a neurotoxin (like cobras), coral snakes are very tame. They don’t attack automatically like pit vipers. You can pick up a coral snake and it won’t just try to bite you; it just tries to get away. There’s one king snake that looks an awful lot like a coral snake. It has the same colors, but the pattern is slightly different. ---
**Author:** ![Carptracker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ac91a4/32.png) [@Carptracker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carptracker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/74 "2009-02-07T16:55:49Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Yes, and I believe that though they have a neurotoxin (like cobras), coral snakes are very tame. They don’t attack automatically like pit vipers. You can pick up a coral snake and it won’t just try to bite you; it just tries to get away. > > There’s one king snake that looks an awful lot like a coral snake. It has the same colors, but the pattern is slightly different. There are several mimics, not just the king snake one. But none of them have red touching black in the red, black, and yellow color scheme. **Red on yellow, kill fellow, red on black, friend of jack.** Before I moved into the Corpus Christ stilt house, a neighbor boy was apparently bitten by a coral snake, but he got the antivenom and was fine afterwards. They had moved out before I moved in so I never met the victim. But the fireman neighbor across the road said that he and his father had been holding it and playing with it for a long time before it bit him. I was told at the time that it was the only recorded coral snake bite in the County, but I can’t verify - that was before the interweb. In fact, the boy would probably be in his late thirties by now if he has not continued with his Darwin Award tendencies. According to the link below, there appears to have been a spate of coral snake bites in Corpus recently. Coral snake bite deaths became very rare after the antivenom was introduced in '67. The link states that there have been none, but it is incorrect in that respect. There was one in 83 in Texas, and if you search you will find references to it - I did, but neglected to save the links to those. I suspect that the Nat Geo article the link quotes predates the 83 bite. I think there have been a couple more, more recently than that. [Link](http://www.texas-venomous.com/news/corpuschristicoralsnakebite.html) Anyhoo - the bad news is that no one is making more Coral snake antivenom these days, and stocks are dangerously low. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/75 "2009-02-07T17:22:51Z")
> [@Carptracker](#): > > There are several mimics, not just the king snake one. But none of them have red touching black in the red, black, and yellow color scheme. > **Red on yellow, kill fellow, red on black, friend of jack.** But it’s important to point out that mnemonic _only works in the United States_. Don’t use it in Latin America :). ---
**Author:** ![Carptracker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ac91a4/32.png) [@Carptracker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carptracker)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/76 "2009-02-07T17:54:02Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > But it’s important to point out that mnemonic _only works in the United States_. Don’t use it in Latin America :). I did not know that, and I have spent years in Costa Rica and occasionally visit Mexico. Why? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/77 "2009-02-07T18:32:10Z")
> [@Carptracker](#): > > I did not know that, and I have spent years in Costa Rica and occasionally visit Mexico. Why? Because [this handsome little bloke](http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?query_src=&seq_num=214190&one=T) lives in Costa Rica and he could kill you ;). That mnemonic works perfectly for the two ( or three, depending how you split things ) U.S. species of coral snakes, _Micrurus fulvius/tener_ and _Micruroides euryxanthous_. But there are 60+ species of coral snakes in the Americas as a whole and it _doesn’t_ work on all of them. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/78 "2009-02-07T18:39:49Z")
To slow for the edit: Poking around, I can quickly find AT LEAST five species of Mexican coral snake that violate that mnemonic as well. ETA: If you’re a snake chaser in Latin America, do invest in Campbell and Lamar’s Venomous Reptiles of Latin America. Great, great book. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2009, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/79 "2009-02-08T01:31:17Z")
Of course, the simplest rule is, if you see a snake, leave it alone. Sure, it’s probably not poisonous, but even if not, why should you go trying to pick it up? It’s just going about its business; you go about with yours. Unless it’s in your house or something, but that’s not a very common place to find snakes. ---
**Author:** ![Carptracker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ac91a4/32.png) [@Carptracker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carptracker)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2009, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153/80 "2009-02-09T00:06:28Z")
As noted above, I _have_ found snakes in my house (or, at least garage) on several occasions. But I would not normally go messing around with a snake I found in the wild, not so much because it could hurt me, but because it probably does not deserve to have me ruining its day. (Unless I wanted to eat it, or wear its skin or something, in which case, all bets off.) I did not know about the coral snakes. I’ve seen several coral snakes or their mimics in Costa Rica. But the mnemonic never came into play - I never really wanted to mess with them, and usually when you see a coral snake, it is gone before you could say “Friend of Jack”. Pretty hard to count the stripes on a red, yellow, and black blur. Not true of the terceopelo (I think called Fer de lance, in English, although it sounds French to me). Those darn things stand their ground. The only time I ever killed a poisonous snake because it was poisonous was when one came through the door of a rancho (in Costa Rica, that means a usuallly one-room, thatched roof house) we were building. We were not finished with the building, but we had crashed on the floor, with no roof or door on it yet. It was in the wee hours, very bright moon, and I got up to go pee, and met a medium sized terceopelo right as it came through the door. More than half the floor space was covered with sleeping people, so I yelled and grabbed up a big machete and killed it. Scared holy heck out of my friends, not because of the snake, but because I was yelling and swinging a huge machete inside around all these people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-a-small-but-dangerous-animal-in-your-house/484153.md?page=5)