Always scared of the ticks. Also hate the mice, but we're selling this house next week so bye-bye,tick-carrying mousies!

Always the mosquitoes. Big Girl is a walking buffet for them.

And the damn ants keep coming back. I need to get on a quarterly pet control schedule *sigh*

I'm relatively free of bug problems this year. I made what had intended to be slug traps for the garden, using cheap plastic containers, yeast, sugar and water. Slugs ignored them, but flies couldn't get enough. Every day they are filled with dead flies, and every day the magpies come and feast on them. Win-win (unless you're a fly).

I had a huge spider run across the living room floor the other night - just a harmless house spider, but it was massive. My handy-dandy spider catcher came to the rescue, and it was returned to the outdoors.

Our big problem at the moment is rats, thankfully outside. I've invested in lockable bait stations and professional bait blocks. The rats are in all the gardens round here, and not everyone is doing anything about them, but I and my immediate neighbours are all doing our best to control them.

Yikes! I'd rather have bugs than mice/rat problems.

And I love the idea of a magpie feedin station!

I like the word "magpie."

Seattle has been in a deep Beijing like haze due to smoke from fires in British Columbia and a complete absence of the onshore winds that usually give us natural air conditioning. We also just set a record for days without rain. I can feel the invisible particles in my throat and eyes, woke up with a headache yesterday, and even tasted some smoke in my mouth yesterday evening. CANNOT WAIT to see this end.

Wasps. Lot of them. I've lost count of how many nests I have destroyed this year. The great big solitary wasps and the medium sized ones with big nests and the little wee ones that nest inside things with small holes in them like bricks or wood.

On the up side I have not been stung.

Senyar I thought just having a cat around would keep the rodents at bay?

arse_hat, she's 16, deaf as a post, with stiff little legs and has never caught anything bigger than a moth in her life. Once a mouse was eating her food and she just cried pathetically until I picked it up by the tail and put it outside.

senyar, tell Lucy that's unacceptable to not be able to deal with a mouse. She missed elementary kitty school!

Senyar, I have always read that just the smell of a cat living in the area keeps rodents away. Clearly Lucy doesn't smell enough!