Are You Scared of Creepy Crawlies?

Me, not so much.  Since I raised two sons, my tolerance of bugs and other crawlies has been pretty thoroughly tested.   I have to admit I don't love all bugs, but as a general rule I don't run screaming or kill indiscriminately.  There are a few offenders that I just can't handle, but on the whole I try to cultivate a live and let live policy.

Spiders are just fine in my books.  They kill a lot of flying insects, and I've always believed that the occasional spider in the house is proof that you're living a "green" lifestyle.  That doesn't mean I get carried away.  If a large creepy spider starts waving its palps at me menacingly, I have been known to apply Kleenex and stomp.  If there happens to be a son handy, they lovingly corral the beast in the Kleenex, carry it gently outside, and relocate it.  I know which attitude is the best, but there are always exceptions to the rule.  Certainly in late summer when those pesky fruit flies/fungus gnats start to swarm, it's handy to have a spider or two lurking.  Now that I think of it, I can remember one night when my sons were about 5 when a previously unnoticed spider's nest suddenly started to disgorge baby spiders.  What felt like hundreds of baby spiders.  The boys were thrilled, but I wasn't.  They got really upset when I hauled out the vacuum cleaner and sucked as many as possible up.  I guess I blew our Charlotte's Web moment, but I really didn't want that many spiders in the house.

I don't know too many people who like earwigs.  I certainly don't.  There is just something about the pinchers behind them, and the creepy way they crawl all over the place when you lift up something in the garden.  They decimate the plants I love, but strangely the ground cover and weeds that are infesting our lawn are always untouched.  If there is going to be something as icky looking as an earwig, it would be nice if they did something useful.  Like eat dandelions, instead of lettuce.  There is nothing worse than getting a head of romaine lettuce in the summer and trying to get all the earwigs out of it before you take it in the house.  You can wave it in the air, submerge it in a bucket of water and then shake it, and you'll still find earwigs when you wash it.

Grasshoppers have to be one of my all time hates.  This is undoubtedly due to spending a childhood in Saskatchewan.   My father had a good sized vegetable garden, and used to go out with a pair of garden scissors and cut all the grasshoppers he found in half.  I guess that was a relatively organic way to deal with the problem, but it sure made an impression on me.  We had a garage wall beside our garbage bin, and it was my job to take the garbage out.  My father had nets against the side of the garage with sweet pea plants trained up them.  The flowers smelled wonderful, and we picked them all summer and brought them into the house for my mother.  I can still recall the terror of taking the garbage out to the bin and having to pass the wall of sweet peas.  The grasshoppers loved them, and would fly into the air and land on me as I walked past.  I get goosebumps remembering the feel of their feet clinging to me.

Remember when ladybugs were good?  I do.  Now apparently we've been invaded  by a different ladybug who is not as friendly as the ones I recall when I was a child.  I know when we lived in the country there was one season when we had literally thousands of ladybugs on the side of our house, and eventually in the windows and attic.  They still look cheerful and happy to me, and I believe even the invasive ones eat aphids and such, but they are no longer a strictly benign insect.  I do know that they can bite now, which was a rude shock the first time it happened to me.

I was at a garden club meeting a few weeks ago, and one of the presenters got very excited about praying mantis.  She sells egg cases, and was telling us what wonderful organic pest controls they are.  I would be interested in pursuing this, because I understand they love to eat ants, but I think I've left it too long and the eggs have hatched.  Maybe next year.