55 replies to this topic

[Sweet Fanny Addams]

Still no new insights on the ant issue. Can't smell em, don't like them, at least I don't like the ones that bite or spit or whatever it is they do that's toxic.
Cockroaches emit an odor I can pick up. In New York city,  they are a real problem. If a place is infested it definitely pongs. And in NYC where apartment buildings proliferate, it almost doesn't matter how clean you keep your house, they still get in via the shared walls and floors. Horrible smell, it's musty and sharp at the same time. We don't have those in London thank God because I really really hate cockroaches. They smell, they're dirty, and they breed like crazy.

Slightly off topic, when I got stung by wasps or hornets as a kid, my mom would put sugar or honey over the sting.It drew the barb out and if you use honey, it disinfects the site too.
I'm now highly allergic to wasp, hornet and bee stings because I was bitten so many times as a child. I was obsessed with picking berries, would clamber into thick bushes to forage for them. That pissed off the insects, and  I developed allergies due to constant stings.
A few years ago I got bitten really badly by fire ants. They're small but there was a huge swarm of them. A German woman saw me in distress, got an onion and sliced it in half. She rubbed my feet and legs with the onion juice where all the bites were and it worked.

[wagtail]

you can smell cockroaches?  that's kinda gross.  I'm glad I can't smell 'em, cause I hate them too.

Fire ants somehow got through Aussieland's very rigid quarantine and are established in Queensland, although I have no idea how bad the situation is.  They sound horrible.  


That's interesting about the onion, I should try that if I ever get bitten by a spider again.

BTW:  at the moment I have to walk through a gazillion* spider webs everyday when I'm in the field, the spiders this season are nutso.  I always feel a bit guilty barging through and destroying their webs, but there is just too many to try and go around [which is usually what I try to do].  Yesterday I was following a kangaroo track into a swamp to do some work in the morning and by the time I came back out for lunch they'd all completely re-done their webs.  I wish I could be that efficient with my house renovations.



*may be a slight exaggeration

[slinky1]

Crickets have a very unpleasant smell.

Fire ants are indeed nasty and every step should be taken to get rid of them before they spread.  I remember when they first started appearing in the Southeast part of the US.  Now they pretty much everywhere.  Nast creatures.

I hope to one day be able to make this statement...."I was following a kangaroo track into a swamp "    Sound like a good first sentence for a fantasy novel of some sort.

[wagtail]

slinky1, on 12 March 2011 - 03:00 AM, said:

I hope to one day be able to make this statement...."I was following a kangaroo track into a swamp "    Sound like a good first sentence for a fantasy novel of some sort.

Lol.  If the shenanigans I have been witnessing in the last 12 months are anything to go, there will be no shortage of kangaroos over here anytime soon!  

On that topic, if anyone thinks the horse penis in the Walk it Back film is shocking and TMI, they really don't want to see a kangaroo penis.

[Sweet Fanny Addams]

Rebekah, pretty much every New Yorker can smell cockroaches. They have a very distinctive odor. It's foul. Apartments in the East Village which are all old tenement buildings were over-run with the little fuckers when I lived there. Even if you spent your life cleaning, it wouldn't solve the problem. I can recall one particularly bad infestation. I had scrubbed everywhere and put roach motels in every corner, and just as I was about to take off the rubber gloves and feel good about how I was dealing with the cockroach situation, 3 or 4 walked right past me, all of them trailing egg sacks full of future cockroaches. I smashed them with a flip flop,but those old buildings are a virtual fort for the varmints. They have colonized in the walls probably for over 100 years, and not a lot can be done to kill them.
I'm not sure if it's true but I've heard that if there were to be a  nuclear catastrophe that killed everything off, the exception that would carry right on regardless are cockroaches. *shudder*

[Trytek]

Mine smell like honey.

[Sweet Fanny Addams]

Trytek, on 12 March 2011 - 09:12 AM, said:

Mine smell like honey.

Heeeee!
But that would attract the ants, so maybe not so good?

[trix]

slinky1, on 12 March 2011 - 03:00 AM, said:

Crickets have a very unpleasant smell.

Fire ants are indeed nasty and every step should be taken to get rid of them before they spread.  I remember when they first started appearing in the Southeast part of the US.  Now they pretty much everywhere.  Nast creatures.

I hope to one day be able to make this statement...."I was following a kangaroo track into a swamp "    Sound like a good first sentence for a fantasy novel of some sort.

Apparently New Zealand is the only place where they have successfully stopped a fire ant invasion, just because they were able to catch it very early.  They found one colony near the airport and eradicated it before they spread.

Crickets have a good image but they make a terrible racket.  Twice I have had to search a house high and low to find a cricket and get rid of it so I could go to sleep.

[Milsean Cady]

Trytek, on 12 March 2011 - 09:12 AM, said:

Mine smell like honey.

That's bees.

(And darn you for beating me to it!)

[wagtail]

Sweet Fanny Addams, on 12 March 2011 - 08:23 AM, said:

Rebekah, pretty much every New Yorker can smell cockroaches. They have a very distinctive odor. It's foul. Apartments in the East Village which are all old tenement buildings were over-run with the little fuckers when I lived there. Even if you spent your life cleaning, it wouldn't solve the problem. I can recall one particularly bad infestation. I had scrubbed everywhere and put roach motels in every corner, and just as I was about to take off the rubber gloves and feel good about how I was dealing with the cockroach situation, 3 or 4 walked right past me, all of them trailing egg sacks full of future cockroaches. I smashed them with a flip flop,but those old buildings are a virtual fort for the varmints. They have colonized in the walls probably for over 100 years, and not a lot can be done to kill them.
I'm not sure if it's true but I've heard that if there were to be a  nuclear catastrophe that killed everything off, the exception that would carry right on regardless are cockroaches. *shudder*

urgh.  that's revolting.

I must have been lucky, I didn't see a single cockroach when I was in NYC, but it was ridiculously cold so maybe they were just in hibernation.

[wagtail]

I was looking at some info from Queensland biosecurity regarding fire ants and this made me laugh:

"Please call 13 25 23 to report any suspicious ant activity."



I can just imagine the phone calls, "hello, hello, officer....I want to report a suspicious ant"

[DericksHam]

wagtail, on 12 March 2011 - 02:11 AM, said:

Really?  Are you talking big ants like the inch ant above - do you have those in that part of Asia.  Or are you talking about little ones?


I've had ants in my drinking water too, and they taste like they smell.

nope, don't see any longer than half an inch here. fire ants, regular small-ish black ants and those small reddish ones  that really make me itch with their bite. can't say they taste like anything when i drank 'em. never drank fireants, as they seem to easily crawl their way out of potential watertraps.

[wagtail]

DericksHam, on 14 March 2011 - 06:59 AM, said:

nope, don't see any longer than half an inch here. fire ants, regular small-ish black ants and those small reddish ones  that really make me itch with their bite. can't say they taste like anything when i drank 'em. never drank fireants, as they seem to easily crawl their way out of potential watertraps.

for some reason, I always imagined your part of the world having really big ants and other critters like that.

I had been thinking earlier about whether the floods in Queensland might have got rid of some of the fire ants, but your comments suggests that's unlikely.

[Ronja]

can you smell ants?


nope, your kidding right?

[california_ash]

I can only smell red imported fire ants. They are all over my ranch and I can tell when they have been in the area by their chemical trails. I think I was so terrified by them when I was a child (because their bite was so painful and they were so aggressive) that i must have trained and associated the scent to them. I can tell when they have been on my clothing or when i walk into a room. I can usually find them by following the scent as it gets stronger when I approach the source. It smells like a spicy vinegar/ musty peppers.

[Ginger]

I can't smell ants but I once sat on a nest of RED ants, did you know they bite, nasty critters