Here in New Mexico, we have had way too many triple digit temperature days since last spring. Yesterday our outside thermometer got up in the mid 90s Fahrenheit. But today it’s only supposed to reach the low 60s, yaay!
Since my husband and I bought this house and moved here six months ago, we have been inundated with an unbelievable variety of pests. Right now, we are having a plague of caterpillars. There are literally thousands of caterpillars in our yard at this very moment. Plus we keep finding spiders of every variety, both inside and outside the house, including a red backed jumping spider (which I had never heard of before), several big hairy tarantulas (eek), and I recently found two toxic bark scorpions inside our home. One scorpion was walking on the ceiling of our bedroom and I did not see it until after I had climbed into bed. EEEK! (My dear hubby says that I “screamed like a girl.” ) The other scorpion was lying on the floor in the hallway when I got up before sunrise one morning. Thinking it was one of the dogs’ toys lying there in the shadowy darkness, and being the neat freak that I am, I bent down and picked it up with my bare fingers — only to discover that it was ALIVE! I was too terrified to scream, that time. Thank God it did not sting me, or I would have ended up in the hospital last week.
In our yard we have spotted numerous toads, lizards, road runners, two different varieties of snake… and yet we live in a small city, surrounded by houses and lots of traffic, on just a 1/4 acre lot. There are also ants of every size, shape, and color, all over our yard. I did not even know that there are so many different kinds of ants in the world.
My husband and I don’t like killing things, but we finally got some pesticide because we don’t know what else to do. Bark scorpions can be deadly to small pets, small children, the infirm and the elderly. And all these zillions of creepy crawly caterpillars are killing our big beautiful fruitless mulberry tree, and leaving greenish-black caterpillar poo droppings all over everything. Yuck!
I have never had such terrible problems with pests, not even when I lived out in the country. But, looking on the bright side: it is definitely not boring here. Plus I am getting a lot of exercise, chasing after spiders, flies, moths, caterpillars, and ants. Our two rescue dogs like it here too, especially Baby, our big golden mystery mix dog. She loves chasing toads and lizards, and so far she has caught two snakes!
Luckily, we haven’t seen any poisonous snakes here. Yet…
Photo of bark scorpion by Author Musides, 2008, posted on Wikipedia Commons. Thank you for stopping by and God Bless!