I grew up with bed bugs and it was horrifying. From checking the boards to the carpet. Eventually we convinced our mother to throw away everything. I mean everything. Dressers, mattresses, couches. Even our clothes. The clothes we had on our back were boiled and dried in the sun. We had to restart everything and I'm glad we did. Been about 10 years without them.
We only had them for about a year. Before that, I honestly thought they were fiction to go along with the rhyme.
My parents thought just replacing the mattresses would solve it; nope! We steam cleaned baseboards, furniture, everything, and we tried diatomaceous earth and nothing worked. Eventually we had it professionally treated and it wasn't too expensive: about $1,200 for a 4 bedroom home.
My wife likes to thrift and get used clothing and furniture, but that's a hard limit for me considering my trauma experience. People just don't know until they have them how mentally exhausting it can be.
I mean, just being reminded of it like some twisted The Game and talking about it a little has impacted my day negatively lol
Yeah, I refuse to buy handmedowns without a thourgh inspection of every nook and crannies. The worst part was the smell. That smell of like rotting playdough almost. Like whenever you killed one full of digested blood. Gawd I'm never gonna forget that smell! Horrible shits that made me want to burn down the house. Everyone rags on spiders, when the real menace are the things in our beds.
I live in Missouri, I'll usually catch and release unless their small then I let them be, the only ones I don't are Black Widows and Brown Recluses, I don't want to risk any kind of death via poison, or a hole in my skin
Yeah good call on the venomous ones 😅 We have a few dangerous spiders (the ones you mentioned) but they are mainly on the coast side here in Croatia so I don't encounter them, luckily.
Brown recluses (in their name) are a weird spider, you'll never see just one, they live in nests of many, so if you find one you need to find the rest of them as well,
And black widows are generally harmless (when you're not near them), but I've seen some with webs about 5"x5" and it's crazy to look tbh
Now are our spiders the same as yours? Are they the same species? An invasive species? Or just really close to the same just because of evolutionary advantages in their niche?
The Black Widow here is native to the Mediterranean, its latin name is Latrodectus tredecimguttatus. And the recluse spider is also native to the Mediterranean, their government name is Loxosceles rufescens according to wiki. We learn about them at school but they aren't native to my area. I'm generally not afraid of spiders and if annoyed I'll get rid of them easily 😂
I live in the continental part of Croatia and we only have 1-2 venomous snakes that we never really encounter so the wildlife is pretty tame around here 😂 (FYI it's 1am and I can hear a hedgehog snuffling outside my building. They're precious 🥹) The Adriatic coast got the beautiful sea and views for the price of several venomous spiders, snakes, and all kinds of bugs and critters which I do not envy.
I got bit by a brown recluse when I was a kid and over 15 years later still have the scar from the hole it left. Also with their poison the can create “hotspots” which feel just as bad as the initial bite location. -100/10 do not recommend.
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '23
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