First, important question. Does anybody have experience with WP Engine private server hosting? Are they worth the money, because the price they quoted me is stratospheric.
Three days ago
Me: There is a giant mosquito.
Gordon, picking up a fly swatter: I’ll get it.
Me: I think you might need a bigger flyswatter.
Two days ago
Me: There is a spider of significant size in the bathroom.
Gordon: I’ll take it outside. ::Reviewing the size of the spider:: Hmm. No, I think I may have to kill this one.
Last night
Me, walking in my nightgown into the study.
Gordon: ?
Me: There is a scorpion in the closet.
Gordon, getting up.
Me: No need. I killed it. I just wanted you to know it was there and I almost stepped on it, so be careful walking in there barefoot.
It was a small scorpion, too, which made it particularly poisonous.
Listen, Texas, I am game and all, but quit it. I mean it.
Other Barbara says
OMG. Terrorized in NJ.
ZA says
+1 in Brooklyn 🙂
Tasha A. says
+1 Boston
Lisa says
I feel you. Apparently, I’m a snake charmer. I don’t have any pesky rats or mice around though.
Jenette says
+1 SLC
Carrie R says
I found a scorpion in my washing machine, once, when I lived in Austin.
Cathy says
+1 in NYC. Yikes and eek!!!
Keera says
When we liven in NJ the worst were raccoons and squirrels. I kind of miss them now ???
MissB2U says
+1 on the Left Coast
Amy J says
+1 Connecticut.
Jon says
I gather that my habit of wandering barefoot in the dark… would not fly in Texas.
In fairness, it’s also dangerous where I live. Legos can launch an ambush from any surface.
Melina Behrens says
+1
OUCH!!! LEGOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Kristine Ten-Eyck says
Caltrips +1
Courtney Mincy says
Last night I stepped out of the bathroom and saw something scurry down the hall. Light wasn’t on, so it was dim. I thought mouse. Turned on the light…spider. Big enough for the kitten to saddle up and ride.? After much screaming I managed to kill it. Not getting near enough to it to capture and release.?
P. McGhie says
So glad I live in Ontario where the only poisonous creature is the Massasauga rattle snake. Mind you the dock spiders at the cottage are as big as your hand.?
Karen the Griffmom says
Well, at least if you decide to move to Australia, you’ll be prepared . . .
Jenn says
Australia is a nightmare
Most poisonous snakes
Giant spiders
Poisonous creatures to numerous to name
Surrounded by gigantic sharks
??????
Jenn says
and the box jellies. They are the most terrifying creature on earth if you ask me. If you survive, you’re in for agony beyond imagination. I’d rather take my chances with a shark.
Christie says
It’s ok! The super killer creatures are rare to see.. well, mostly… but we have a sizeable elderly population, so if it was that dangerous we wouldn’t have anyone alive over 15-20!
In saying all that, am I totally badass because I’ve lived to 35?? ?
Maria says
So glad I live in Norway where it’s too cold for creepy crawlies.
Where I’m from (Romania) we do have our fair share of snakes and bugs tho. I was in Malta a couple of weeks ago with my Norwegian boyfriend when I heard him screaming like a little girl because a lizard came into our AirBnb. We named him Draco 🙂
Aggiereader says
We just moved to Houston last year. We recently killed a venomous coral snake next to our drive way. I told my husband if I had known thise were here, we would still be in Ohio.
kommiesmom says
I’d be willing to bet that there are some snakes in Ohio, but perhaps not as many.
For an urban area, Houston has a lot of “green space” that supports wildlife. I used to watch bunnies on the lawn from my apartment window just off Beltway 8. Now, I watch the coyotes wander past my house after they’ve checked out the trash cans. (Indoor cats, thank you, no matter how big they are!)
If you see a snake, don’t try to kill it unless you are calm and have a plan. Otherwise, get away and call for help from someone who knows what they need to do.
Oh – fun fact – these days, rattlesnakes don’t rattle about half of the time. The feral hogs have learned to find the snakes by the sound of their rattles and eat them. The snakes that don’t rattle are the ones surviving and the percentage of them is rising…
Meredith says
I don’t understand why everyone kills snakes. Most snakes will go away if you just leave them alone. Coral snakes have very small mouths and are unlikely to bite anything unless you’re barefoot and they can get a toe.
Also, rattle snakes rattle to warn you. They want you to go away. Snakes act aggressive because what other way do they have to scare us off? We have so many snakes on our property but we leave them alone. Other than relocating a few large rat snakes from our chicken coup, and the one curled up in my husbands passenger seat. Ha! I had no idea he could scream like that!
Ilona says
That’s because you never met an aggressive copperhead in the stream during their mating season.
Tink says
I was going to point that it could be worse and you could live in Australia. I still remember that video of the giant spider dragging a dead mouse up the side of a washing machine.
Kathy says
My workplace uses wp-engine. We love them, but I’m pretty sure they’re not cheap. We used to use GoDaddy. OMG, what a mistake….
Tina says
Just wait until you get a snake in the bathroom. Texas is full of fun stuff like this. lol
Ann says
There was a 4″ spider in my tub yesterday. Normally they go down the drain, but I had to get this one out of doors because it was too big! There was some hyperventilating involved.
Thankfully Seattle only does the spiders, not scorpions or mosquitoes.
Sara B. says
Oh yes, Seattle area does so have mosquitoes, just in the “wetlands” areas … e.g. marshy areas where (unfortunately) a lot of condos have been built. And frogs. Lots of frogs singing lustily and loudly of ‘amore”. But generally no scorpions or dangerous snakes.
PG says
And more and more sugar ants in Seattle…
RondaG says
In theory if you kept a small herd of skunks, they would eat the scorpions. (I particularly dislike the crunch scorpions make during the death by shoe process, but I never could get any of my housemates or landlords to allow me to keep a small herd of skunks.)
Jean says
There is a Large herd of skunks that lives in the forest preserve next to the mobile home park where I live. They particularly Do.Not.Like. to be startled by loud noises, so Fourth of July week was really stinky, between gunpowder of firecrackers, etc., being thrown around at night, and the odor of startled skunks. Yay. Happy holiday.
Sarah says
Have any R. O. U. S.’s been spotted in House Andrews?
Amanda says
Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist…
a says
Ah yes, memories of Beirut – and flying cockroaches too.
Gross.
Erin says
Don’t come to NC we have palmetto bugs, which are basically giant flying cockroaches
Muff says
Talk about icky crunchy noises when squishing!!!!!
Jennifer Thomson says
We lived in El Paso for 2 years. They had freaky scary bugs! I forget the name of this one in particular that looked almost like a fat giant centipede – it could actually eat small birds. I am definitely not a fan of insects.
Henry says
There is a very large millipied and vinegarons, called whipped tailed scorpions. Both are harmless, just scare the hell out of the unaware they are so large. Google them.
RJ Foster says
Since I have moved to Texas (from Arizona) I have survived an ice storm that split trees, power out for 3 days and over a thousand dollars to get split tree off house, save another tree that started to split (giant bolt – it’s really cool) and made me drop my chemistry class. Then there was the softball size hail (there is documentation – not exaggerating.) I saw the bottom of a tornado as it went by overhead. Inside my brain the science teacher was thinking “cool!” and the rest of me was thinking “what the HECK??” and “why did I move here again??” I have seen strange bugs, had both bugs and spiders fall on my head and I have planted 3 trees that have actual leaves. (desert people will understand) Welcome to Texas!
Kathryn says
Living in northern San Antonio, a bit south of you. Neighbors have been reporting a lot of coral snakes. And of course rattlesnakes. I think all the rain we’ve gotten has resulted in more food sources for them.
Rebecca says
Sorry, can’t help on wp-engine. We use Siteground. Not expensive, fantastic support (by smart helpful human beings) but we don’t have super intensive needs. Maybe an option ?
Akeru Joyden says
It’s hot outside, they just want to get cool too… But I totally get your POV. I don’t have giant mosquitos here but I have a metric ton of the ones I do have and all of them are devoted to the idea of toting me off to be their temporary blood supply (until they suck me dry.)
dave says
To be fair, most “giant mosquitoes” are Crane flies. Some crane flies eat mosquitoes (although this might be crane fly larvae eat mosquito larvae) They don’t bite.
And while some small scorpions are very poisonous, not all are. Some just hurt when they sting (a lot)
Henry says
The Emperors in the photograph are raised in many homes. They can sting, but are easy to handle.
Jenette says
I love nearly every aspect of fall–except for the bugs. And rodents. Fall is when they all decide it’s too cold outside and start to move indoors. And unlike in spring, now they are all fully grown and terrifying and icky. Thanks, but no thanks.
Nicole says
Private – I want to call that dedicated. I work in the “cloud”.
Private could be a standalone separate physical server, or could be a dedicated segregated virtual server. One is much more expensive than the other.
Then what is included?
Licensing, monitoring, remediation, patching, backups? What’s needed to support a dedicated WP site? Would it all fit in one server or are there multiple? One for the back end and one the web front in? Any tolerance for downtime, and how much? There are so many option for cloud and hosting that you really need to make sure they give details of what that environment will be and services included.
Ilona says
It’s a dedicated server, which is hella pricey. For this amount of moneys, we get CDN, staging environment, 24/7 support, they take over security and caching, so there are no more plugins. We get their version of cPanel, and there is practically no downtime. Basically, they take care of everything except for the typical wordpress updates.
The problem I am facing now is that the current host, while stable, only allows FTP acess to the back end of the site and they are not responsive. For example, they informed me that there 600+ entries in the htaccess file, when there should be like two. I haven’t touched the htaccess file. Any edits within it were done server side.
Also, I want to switch the site to https and when I informed my host of this, their response was “you have a lot of work to do.” No, I don’t want to do work, I want to give you money to do work for me. So I am kind of stuck.
The problem is that our year-to-date stats right now are showing over 6 million unique visitors and over 14 million pageviews, plus we have traffic spikes, which prices us out of most non-dedicated options. So I guess we are victims of our own success.
Tink says
Sorry not sorry (to increasing your stats).
I bet you saw an uptick on Fridays when people were refreshing to get the latest Innkeeper installment.
DionV says
My work have been using WP Engine for basic hosting, not private server, and have had zero issues with it. Pricier than others, yes. But provides a lot more for the money.
We could have DEV, STAGING, and LIVE on ours as well, but don’t need it at this time.
We have to manage plugins in WordPress, but that’s not too difficult for us.
Your website is a marketing tool. Sometimes the budget hurts, but hopefully the ROI is there to justify it.
Siobhan says
Is this your only private hosting option? My brother owns a tech consulting company, and I’m guessing he could find you something less than “stratospheric”. If you are interested in a quick free consult, please get in touch with me.
Kris Ten-Eyck says
Maybe the rule of three was in effect and you are done for a while?
Debbie says
Always and I mean always shake out your shoes before putting them on your feet when you live in Texas!!! Let me tell you, you will only have to feel something squirming around under your foot once before that lesson hits home. I moved to Louisiana and then to Florida. I still shake out my damn shoes! I don’t care if I can see in the toes I am shaking that damn shoe. Just mentioning it makes me shiver and I can still feel it in my shoe under my foot wiggling back and forth.
Opinions on hosting. Back years ago we ran a hosting company before everyone had cable options. No matter what you are paying, you are paying too damn much unless they are doing every single thing for you 100% on a 24/7 flat fee. (I’m talking down to making your webpages exactly as you want them to dealing with DDOS attacks at 3am or major bandwidth usage on new pages) Then it can be worth the money. Otherwise the reality is, server hosting companies have very little invested in keeping your website up and traffic clean. (Amazon is $77 a month for one of their basic packages and they are a top level hosting compared to hostgator.com that runs $12) Lots of basic info https://www.hostingadvice.com/how-to/web-hosting-prices/
Ashley says
I’m right above ya in oklahoma. It could be worse, at least we don’t live in australia.
Rachel says
Nopenopenope! I think I’ll stay in safe Maine. There was a snake in my bedroom last fall. Adorable little thing. That said, the only reason it was adorable is that there is nothing venomous enough to humans to worry about up here, so I didn’t have to worry about it killing me in self defense. Basically no tornados/hurricanes/earthquakes, either. We get noreasters, but as far north and inland as I am they’re not that bad.
I visited a friend in Richmond last year; she was constantly reminding me to stay on the beaten path because copperheads are a thing.
Ilona says
Tell me more about Maine. I heard you guys have good health insurance.
Carolyn says
I think they have winter.
Jane says
I think winter starts in August…
DMcB says
My Maine raised brother in law told me once that Maine had two seasons–July and winter. And my husband and I once asked a Mainer what people did in the winter if they did not ski or ice skate or any other winter sports. She looked slightly shocked and asked “if you don’t do those things, why would you live here?” Nuff said.
jewelwing says
You forgot Mud. July, winter, mud.
Patricia Schlorke says
If you like winter, with below freezing temperatures, and lots of snow, then Maine (as well as all the Northeast) is your state. My maternal grandmother used to go to the southern coast of Maine for vacation. I haven’t been able to get up there yet.
CharisN says
So beautiful June to September. Air so clear you can taste it. Colors so vibrant it doesn’t seem real. But then October to May clear and COLD.
Ami says
Okay, that’s 3. That’s enough. It can stop now!
Falesia Gorski says
We moved into a log cabin a few years ago. I went from panic attack at a thumb nail sized spider to naming them like pets. Right now I have Larry the pervert who only comes out when I shower. Larry just hangs out on the ceiling then crawls back into his tunnel when i get out. I also have Susan and Doug who have a web in the chinking by the back door. They do an excellent job bouncing unwanted flies. I have had to kill a few that got a little too bold in their exploration of our home (as in too close to the bed). But all in all, I can definitely say I have been cured of any phobia I may have had with bugs. Though I really, really, really don’t want to wake up to another scorpion walking across my husband and I.
Robyn says
I live in Oklahoma and have had similar weeks. The scorpion getting into the bed and stinging me and the dog only to be killed by the cat was an eventful night. Glad he didn’t get you.
Tink says
And you just know the cat is lording over the dog about killing the mean scorpion.
Falesia says
Our cats huffed at us for flinging the sheets of the bed. AND THE DOGS! they just rolled over and went back to sleep. The whole lot is worthless if it’s not something they bring in themselves.
Elenariel says
I feel you. I found 2 big spiders the other day in the garden, while watering the plants. One was on a very big spiderweb (all of my armlenght) ?
When I was a teen, I spent some of my summer at my aunt’s mountain house: little scorpions under the pillow were scarily frequent…
Gailk says
In NYC we sometimes have small spiders, or large water bugs. You learn to deal with them, shoe, vacuum cleaner, newspaper. I usually try to be fast and say OMG several times. After killing, I generally put lots of baby powder on it, I can’t stand seeing all those legs.
And dispose of corpse in toilet.
And then there are mice and rats, several times I was on the subway when one emerged or got on. They don’t bother me, had hamsters and worked with rats in college. I have seen grown men scream and run away almost trampling anyone in their path.
True NewYorkers, just go with the flow. And ignore them.
But scorpions, they would scare me.
Did you say you have six million unique viewers !!
Wow , that is incredible and just proves that your fans are worldwide and very devoted.
Regina says
I remember our first house on the lake. We got it cheap because there was temporary flooding, something about a 20 year cycle. We put in pumps, got the water out of the house, and woke up to a muskrat having clawed through the wall and moving into our living room.
Dawn M says
Oh that southern living! Lets see since I moved to SC….
I have encountered our State bird; the Palmetto bug.A giant roach that flies and hisses. With this frightening image now in your mind. I have survived Palmetto Bug- Apocalypse where a freak occurence of millions of those things surrounding my apartment building. I wish I was exaggerating. It was a horror film scene.
Shortly after there was a frog in my bathroom…no idea how it got there…but there was a frog.
Then there was a freak ant experience. Where fire ants tunneled from their nest into said appartment into at the time my 4 year old daughter’s room.
2 years later we survived a snake in the apartment.
We finally moved. Now we just share space with giant wolf spiders.
I miss NY, where roaches don’t fly, ants don’t bite and there no snakes. Where spiders just tell you “what’s up?” as they walk by you in the shower.
Skye says
Palmetto bugs are called tree roaches by the people I knew is Houston. The first time I saw one was in the first month of living there. One of our leasing people lived on the floor above me and I took advantage of that and dragged her downstairs to help me with it. She was as freaked as I was and we couldn’t catch it. So I lived with the knowledge that the damned thing was Still In The Apartment!!! Eventually, I saw it limping across my bedroom floor (EEEK!) but slowly, so I got a bowl and covered it and put a book on it to be sure. A few days later, I asked maintenance to come remove it. It was dead. Dead dead. The guy looked at me like I was nuts, but at least it was dead and out of my place. That was how I dealt with any of those damned things that stupidly came inside. (The apartments were sprayed outside monthly and inside as needed, so I think the roaches were weakened by the poison, causing delusions that lead them inside.
Kim H says
In 1999 we lived in Houston for 364 days, 12 hours, and 16 minutes. We hated every minute of it and the bugs were a bit part of that. Fire Ants, centipedes, millipedes, cockroaches, spiders of all shapes and sizes…UGH. We had a monthly visit from the exterminator guy to refresh the insect perimeter around the house but that didn’t help the fire ant infestation of the lawns. We didn’t want them to use pesticides there because of the dogs and the guy looked at me like I was mental. David still has scars on his legs from the fire ants he disturbed when he didn’t see the ground level nest and ran over it with the lawnmower. We moved back to Seattle as soon as we could manage it and now only have to deal with the annual spider mating season in the fall and the occasional mosquito festival in the summer. We put up a bat-house for the local little brown bats and that has helped keep the skeeters down. I’m glad Gordon bravely handles the invasion and good for you that you got that scorpion first!
Carolyn says
I Live In Tennessee with two Siamese cats. They fortunately have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to other animals. They tolerated the Boxer, but didn’t indulge him. Swift claw to the forehead was the norm. Poor Patton. Lizards, spiders, flies, ants, centipeeds, millipedes, catepillars, mice and anything self propelled is quickly handled. They don’t want me to take it away.
Kendra says
I have not heard of WP Engine – I use Siteground, as well, and have for at least five years now. Great customer service. They serve a range of customers from really simple to dedicated servers. I only use the gogeek shared hosting with unlimited websites and overall 100k max visits a month. I have multiple websites (some with test versions), but not a lot of traffic at this time. They do have cloud hosting that is in between shared and dedicated – maybe an option for you there? They mention an auto-scale feature that helps to deal with traffic spikes, but they put the traffic needs in terms of cores, memory, ssd space and TB of data transfer, so not sure how that would translate to your visits.
Oli says
Almost like living in Australia ?
Keera says
???
I grew up in the Caribbean with houses that had open areas just below the roof for ventilation. I only ever had run ins with mosquitoes, wasps and flies. Moved to the island of Okinawa where the habu snake bite is so poisonous that if you were bit once, they would re-station your Active Duty member to somewhere else and air evacu off the island. Nine years there never saw one.
Moved to North Carolina in one year I have never screamed about the wildlife as much as I’ve had to here. I had to drive to pick up my kids from school because of bears on the main thoroughfare. Getting out of the water due to sharks near the shore at 3 different occasions (now we just walk on the sand or go to the pool to cool off). House infested with fireants, crickets and cockroaches coming out of the vents and light switches (they moved us to another house). Saw a fox and her cubs take down a small cat in the area directly behind my house. Frogs dropping out of trees onto you while you are trying to relax in the yard. And at 130pm in the afternoon a snake chilling on my front porch.
We are stuck here for the next 3 to 4 years….I have tried to like this state but I dont think it likes me.
Lisa says
I had a client on WPEngine and we moved them to Siteground because it wasn’t worth the cost. Your current host sounds awful regardless, so I definitely think you need to move. I assume your traffic is much, much greater than most of my clients’ sites, so you probably do need either a VPS or private server to handle the traffic, and a good CDN. I’ve heard good things about Flywheel but haven’t used them. There is a WordPress Hosting group on Facebook you can join for more specific feedback, and I know some people in there use WPEngine.
Good luck!
Also happy I live in VA and while we do have very large spiders, there are no scorpions.
Amber says
You are super brave I can’t stand bugs I have peat people spray inside and outside once a month and if I find a bug in the house in between they come back to respray
kommiesmom says
Having lived in Texas for 68 of my 70 years, spiders, ants, mosquitos and roaches are as much of the weather pattern as the heat and humidity. I’m sorry, I’ll take them over snow, ice, and lethally cold temperatures.
I understand others will not feel this way. That’s okay, they don’t have to.
I’ve always known I was weird. It no longer bothers me.
Henry says
Plus 1
Marli says
Winnipeg Canada here. Mosquitos are the provincial bird, but nothing venomous at all! Very small garter snakes that nest in one area and are considered a tourist attraction. Of course, we regularly are colder than the surface of Mars in the winter. That’s why no bugs….
William B says
I know you had a bad experience in South Carolina, but I love my gated community near Clemson University.
Lynn Latimer says
In S. Central Texas there is a saying that everything flora and faunas stinks, stings or sticks, possibly all three at once.
Amy says
I’m not that familiar with WP Engine (other than people I know who use them like them).
I’ve heard great things about Siteground (I have web developer friends who recommend Siteground to all of their clients).
I used Dreamhost when I still had a WP site and really liked them. Especially the back end. I had their mid-level plan, not a dedicated server, but I thought their pricing was reasonable.
That being said, WP Engine’s pricing nearly gave me a heart attack when I checked it out.
Kayeri says
I’m a little south of Omaha. A small orb weaver spider took up residence on the passenger side rearview mirror on my CR-V. He/She survived every trip I took for about two weeks. My husband ended up naming it Bob. =) Finally, Bob got more ambitious and built the web between my car and Kiddo’s car. Kiddo did NOT appreciate, so I got a broom and gently evicted Bob from my car. He/She didn’t like that and ran away to find a better home. =) Good Bob…
Gail says
1and1.com are pretty good for hosting, email, etc.
nickole195 says
are you kidding me! I will never complain about the silverfish in oft damp sometimes rainy Victoria BC – just can’t, no way, scorpions nope, no way in hell.
Skye says
When I lived in Houston, friends and acquaintances warned me about their dangerous creatures, which were mostly fire ants, copperheads, coral snakes (I really don’t know if it was a coral snake or it’s non-poisonous cousin the king snake; I really didn’t want to take the time to figure it out), water moccasins, you get the idea. No poisonous spiders particularly, no scorpions.
Seattle, well, Western Washington, doesn’t have any poisonous snakes and it’s spiders of danger are the black widow (don’t believe people who tell you those only live in dry climates and never in wet ones, because those damned things THRIVE in the dampness here and in Western Oregon), the brown recluse, which you seldom see, and the hobo spider, which looks just like the larger house spiders we get lots of.
Now I’m moving to Dallas. What do I get to see there? Is it like Austin and southward and general are, or does it have it’s own dangerous beasties? (Oh, and in parts of Houston, like where I lived, you need to look out for wild hogs; they are very dangerous and aggressive.)
Henry says
If you lIve by a lake, Canadian Geese poop all over your yard plus all the other critters.
njb says
Dallas insects are pretty much the same as Houston or Austin. The worst are the fire ants and mosquitos, but I hear the brown recluse spiders are gaining ground. They have a potentially dangerous bite. The venom is necrotic in function and while most bites will eventually heal on their own, sometimes medical intervention is needed. Roaches are a fact of life everywhere in the south.
Patricia Schlorke says
I live in Fort Worth, which is 30 miles west of Dallas. Roaches, mosquitoes, spiders, fire ants, and black hard shell bugs are pretty much the normal pests around here. Flies can be another problem.
jewelwing says
Here’s the easy way to tell a venomous coral snake from a nonvenomous scarlet kingsnake, or any other nonvenomous snake (in the Americas anyway):
Red means stop, yellow means caution. If red and yellow touch, it’s venomous. If red and yellow are separated by black, it’s harmless.
Kara says
We live in the woods, and those dratted things come in our house regularly. Bedroom slippers are a mandatory accessory.
Diane Joned says
I’m a huge WPEngine fan. I manage four WordPress sites for work. We were getting constant hacks until we moved to WPEngine. None since. Their tech support (I access via live chat) is amazing. Friendly, patient, professional, helpful. It’s expensive, yes, and worth it in my experience. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I’ve only had one mildly wrong answer from a tech in the year and a half we’ve been customers and I’ve contacted tech support with questions so many times. Often when there were complex procedures, the tech people would just do them for me, saving me the time to figure it out. I live in anxiety that they’ll be bought out by some giant hosting mill company. Feel free to email me with any questions.
Harley Stone says
I’m never ever ever moving out of the Pacific NW.
Catlover says
Not a fan of creepy crawlers. Drago haunts the garage looking for skinks which he brings in to play with and leaves parts laying around for us to pick up. Fortunately only two so far this year.
CD Lewis says
*giggle*
Catherine says
My sister (who lives in TX) swears to me that having lavender bundles or sachets around your windows and doors will repel scorpions.
Suzann Schmid says
Definitely would have freaked over the scorpion. You are braver than me by far.
Cee says
I shared my first apartment (for the summer) with my sister. It was right on a large lake and there were many bugs of all sorts. I am not crazy about them but it is not like they are rodents so I can deal, but my sister would not. I would come home from work and all of our cups were overturned on the floor throughout waiting for me to dispose of the bugs she’d corralled. All summer.
Bin says
LOL – while I don’t take away from your pain ….. I grew up in and am still living in Australia
no scorpions .. but spiders the size of my face and snakes .. and not to mention the birds called Magpies that try to poke our eyes out every spring. Spring is only a month away … not even a month 3 weeks .. its going to start soon 🙁
But y’all should check out the spiders as big as your face – https://pics.onsizzle.com/so-here-meet-this-little-guy-hes-a-huntsman-spider-19264821.png
Inés says
Now i want a huntsman spider of my own!
Barbara says
????? that sounds hilariously tragic, I’d climb the walls running from this guy. Is there any way to avoid these? If you lock up the whole house, they still show up?
Bin says
Yes they do … they are sort of a staple here lol
They aren’t poisonous, just huge and really really really fast and huge.
I have had to semi mute my fear of spiders because I have passed it onto my daughter, unfortunately. So, cause its just me and her, I have had to develop skills in dealing with these. A broom taped to a mop works as a great keep away extension, but its not a quick tool to use. Specifically because of its turning circle lol.
I still haven’t figured it out and I’m 38, though a thong (shoe) is great, it gets you really close (unfortunately), and then there is the downside of the multiple red dirt scuff marks you leave on your wall from all the missed attempts at murdering this little ball of happiness that just wants to be your friend.!
Bat says
Oh, I think you forgot to mention Huge.
Tiana says
Hahaha I live in sunny Australia too and we don’t even rate the huntsman – if it’s big it probably won’t kill you. It’s the tiny redback spiders (actually look mostly black) that you need to worry about. Half of the time you don’t even know you got bitten by one until u end up in hospital.
And you learn super quick not to leave clothes lying on the floor and to always shake out your shoes and clothes hanging in the closet before putting them on. Also always lift the toilet seat and check underneath both in public toilets and your own.
And don’t get me started on the jellyfish…
Gretchen says
What about the funnel web spiders? I’ve heard that those are utter nightmares. They’re small enough to get by you, they’re aggressive, and their fangs are so strong that they can puncture through your toenail to bite you. And let’s not forget that they’re extremely, extremely poisonous. Both Margot Robbie and Chris Hemsworth have told stories about snakes in their homes. Without the poisonous creatures, I’d visit Australia in a second. As it is, I’m going to have to live without it.
Bin says
Ok so where i live we have the sydney funnel web the standard funnel web and the largest of them all and not really known the tree funnel web …. however its usually just the males you see they come out as the evening cools in the summer in search of a mate … the females (the larger of the two) dont travel far from their funnel/web which is a hollowed out ground burrow like thing usually where there is alot of groung cover… the tree ones are a little different. And they dont chase you .. if you get close they arc up on their hind legs and bare their fangs so you can easiky avoid them. Ive lived in this house for 3 years and only caught/seen 3 males. If you can safely catch and store them the local university take them for milking to make the antivenom.
Plenty of snakes here and im only 10 mins from chris Hemsworths place … but again if you see them dont go near them not a big deal. See a snake stand still till it moves on and your golden.
Emily says
Don’t let the poisonous critters stop you, everywhere has its own poisonous animals, Australia just tells you about them ? I’ve live in Oz all my life (nearly 40 yrs!) and never had any problems with the wildlife and neither has any of my family. Come for a visit!
Tylikcat says
I am reminded of a rather embarrassing episode in my youth entitled why you shouldn’t try to kill a spider with a hammer. (I usually don’t mind spiders? But it was very large and fast, and I was having a bad day.)
Pat says
For little insect invaders i use a hand vac, for really big ones a shop vac with the extension added.
Cadsuanr says
I never thought about using my shop vac. Brillant!
Barbara says
I run screaming from bees (traumatic experience) and rats (just plain scary) and they are super small ? I’m starting to think that you need serious survival skills to live in Australia ?? snakes and scorpions are just plain nope, I’ll abandon the house to them ? I have a fond relationship with common house geckos, do you have them in Australia?
Bin says
We have both native and the indonesian geckos … unfortunately the indonesian ones are killing off the native ones around my area
Joy W says
I need one!?
Kelly says
Fellow Aussie here, I can confirm all of the above!
We have a NOPE for every season, every occasion – visit us now and find a special NOPE that’s just right for you!
Jacquie says
Thank you for posting a link instead of the actual picture of the spider. I would have freaked!!!!! (Yes, thank you!). Even pics get to me. Thankfully our spiders are never to large for the vacuum hose to suck them up.
Bin says
Lol no worries matey
lea says
I feel your pain. I live in Phoenix Arizona (desert, for those of you who don’t live in USA). We have scorpions, too, and tarantulas. Tarantulas are hairy spiders the size of dinner plates. Really. look them up on the internet.
kelticat says
don’t need to look up tarantulas, I live in California. My dad’s friend had his golf ball land on one. That was one golf ball that never was retrieved.
Beth says
I always plan to get fit during our Aussie spring..I don’t think twice about snakes when going on a bush walk but if I step outside my front door to go for a jog and see a Magpie sitting on top of the street light I’ll march myself back inside and stare daggers at it from the nearest window until it flies away!
Bin says
Deadset I usually come a croppa cause I’ve thrown myself to the side so fast to avoid getting my eyes poked out. Those things are vicious .. way more worried about them … fear of spiders and all … I really don’t want to lose an eye
Emily says
Ah our beloved huntsman. There is nothing better than driving down the freeway & have one crawl up the windscreen.
I remember as a kid we had one that lived on the back windscreen that my sister an I called Cling!
Carrie says
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Mary B says
Wusses. I grew up in Florida. We put saddles on the bugs. 5 species of poisonous snakes, all of which I’ve met up close and personal.
Sandra says
And alligators in our lakes, pythons in our swamps, bears in our front yards….
Bat says
Wait, your keep your bears in your front yards? Wow, ours are strictly backyard denizens. Now the alligators do love a good swimming pool.
Everyone here freaks out about the Golden Orb Weavers…. call them Banana spiders.. in Memphis they called Argiopes banana spiders so who knows…. Anyway, spiders I generally leave alone unless there is a huge wolf spider on my bed or something. Then I catch him and put him/her out. The only scorpion I have seen was hanging out in the middle of the break room floor at work.
Joy W says
Florida
I have to admit that when a bull wandered into my backyard, I got scared. He was HUGE!
Another time…
My quote to my husband, “The sonic boom you just heard was me leaving the bathtub when a coral snake dropped into the tub with me.” Fortunately, we had rat snakes and a gorgeous indigo snake that ate the poisonous ones.
Anton says
I would look into getting a pet mongoose. Seriously.
jewelwing says
Bear in mind that a mongoose is adapted to handle cobras, which are relatively slow in striking, but not pit vipers, which strike from a coil and are consequently much quicker. Coral snakes are more like cobras so a mongoose might get one of them, but a copperhead or rattlesnake would likely kill the mongoose.
CharisN says
Sing it Ms. Mary!!!!! Particularly bad this year for some reason.
Dave_5k says
On WP hosting, presume you’ve already seen on-line reviews, but if you hadn’t seen, an interesting resource with reviews of WP Engine and also looks at lower cost alternatives (e.g. InMotion Hosting was similarly rated but looks to be potentially lower cost alternative) by Nate Shivar:
Also has a WP hosting quiz for recommendations, and various options with reviews updated this year:
https://www.shivarweb.com/1737/my-experience-with-wp-engine-wordpress-hosting/
Disclaimer: I’ve not used any of these products myself.
Susan B says
We used InMotionHosting for my husband’s company for several years and found them reliable and DH was able to call someone on the phone when a question came up. We’ve kept the domain name active with them because we use it for email. I use their Box Trapper on my business email address and it does a wonderful job of stopping the Viagra emails from getting to my Outlook in-box. DH has also set up a WordPress site for our sailing club on InMotionHosting. It was his first ever WordPress site, so it took him a while but it seems to be running now.
Cherylanne Farley says
Agree completely. Our biggest problem was various infrastructure issues–our ISP got entangled we had power supply issues satellite signals are groovy. Ground support struggles to catch up.
shel says
Maybe check out Veerotech?
https://www.veerotech.net/ssd-managed-vps
(or maybe the managed wordpress service would work?)
I used this host for 2 years for a tiny site. They were responsive to my pre-purchase questions.
I don’t know if they’d be willing to chase down all your http > https errors for you included in their hosting, but maybe it could be negotiated before sign-up, since it’s a one-time thing.
Natasha Johnson says
Nope to all those and I have lived in Texas my entire life! We went to Colorado for a week and the mosquitoes were crazy there ( not even mosquito repellent would keep them away I think that was their desert bell) but their bites did not swell up and itch like the ones here do! Spiders I have gotten better with except for the one in the barn that is bigger than my hand! Scorpions terrify me even though I have not been stung it has been close! Now rattlesnakes are another story all together we don’t see the big ones just the babies which is worse but the last one we saw (April) we caught and put in a clear container that it could not get out of or strike at us from and my kids took it to CoOp so that the other kids could see it and hear it since most of them live in town and have not seen one.
Dawn says
I picked up my bra to get dressed the other day, and I noticed a shadowy something moving the fabric. I shook it out over the sink. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I what I got was a gigantic centipede of the venomous variety. I managed to shove it down the drain (so many legs – yecch) and then I ran the water for years. After that, I shut the drain plug and filled the sink just to make sure it wasn’t climbing back up.
This was immediately followed by several black widows in the house and yard, and more roaches than I thought possible in the garage.
I am done with the insects.
Chris T. says
Am a technowit so can’t help with your interweb problem, but I appreciate your dislike of bugs in the house. The palmetto bugs we have here in SC are wimps compared to Baltimore roaches, however, so I dispatch those to their afterlife myself. One nice whack! with a sandal kills the palmettos. The Baltimore roaches needed quite a bit more time and effort to kill, and you were never quite sure they were dead or just waiting for you to turn your back to suddenly scuttle back to life. September brings the scorpions here into my southern house. I always wear shoes in the house in September. Good luck with your hosting. I really enjoy the action, love, world building, strong characters and family in your work.
Tylikcat says
Okay… do you have a sense of a range on the scorpions? I knew about the copperheads and such when I moved out here, but I should at least be prepared.
(And prepare the kittens. Who think they get to kill everything. Which is why they only are allowed out on harnesses… “Sweetie, that millipede is wider than my middle finger, which means you shouldn’t eat it!”)
Jen says
Giant spiders – I second all the nopes.
Scorpions – nope-ity-nope.
We used to get bats in the house, never could get the attic sealed well enough to keep them out. Once they were in they would squirm through the ductwork and vents. We wouldn’t know until after sunset and all sitting down watching tv or something. Then the bat would fly around to do bat things. After the first few times we figured out how to get bats outside again as fast as possible:
Stay low, open the closest path to the outside and then get the heck away. Eventually they let themselves out.
What doesn’t work:
Running and screaming (the bat doesn’t care)
Tennis rackets (bats are smarter and faster)
Cats trying to help the human swinging the tennis racket (funny, but the bat is still smarter and faster)
Flushing (Technically it does, but not humane and I have no idea how that bat ended up in the toilet. I didn’t see it until I turned around to flush. I was twelve, thirty years later I still check for ‘company’ before I sit down. Again, not humane, but I was terrified and twelve. I cried.)
Jeff says
I have NOT used WP Engine Private hosting, but I have used other web hosting services, cloudflare, and private hosting services.
However, here’s a simple rule. Unless your income depends on the website being up ALL THE TIME (and a potential slow-response time during a 30 minute window is going to kill you) private hosting is rarely, if ever, the correct answer.
Inés says
Word press as a hosting site didnt work well 4 years ago. Tbh, it worked alright from the host end, but my users (older browsers, not tech savvy users) had issues connecting and seeing content. I used godaddy and wrote all the html. Then time moved on and i don’t do any hosting so my data is old and out of date. I guess that is a long way of saying, keep an eye on what your customer sees and make sure it works for them.
Keren says
Come to New Zealand. We only have one poisonous spider that is so shy, lives in sand dunes and no one ever sees it. Our bats are the size of mice. No snakes. Full disclosure though, we drive like lunatics…
Erin Valentine says
Wonder why New Zealand has almost nothing poisonous, but everything in Australia wants to kill you? 🙂
anna young says
We do have car-destroying parrots and large non-toxic bugs 🙂
https://www.wired.com/2015/06/absurd-creature-of-the-week-weta/
Amy says
No. Just no. I’d already be packed up and on the road to Oklahoma. I wouldn’t stay in Oklahoma but I’d pass through it on y way to somewhere without scorpions.
Tara says
Wood ticks. Yupp. Google those mofo’s. Canada baby! But only in certain provinces.
Tara says
Oh and wood ticks do not “drop off once theyve fed” they just get bigger the more blood they suck up.
Ruby says
Some years ago, I saddled up my horse and set out on the trails in the suburbs of Los Angeles. I was preoccupied with work that morning, so I let the horse find her way and didn’t pay much attention to the flora and fauna. Suddenly, I was aware of a harsh hissing sound and when my eyes finally focused on the path, I beheld an aroused rattlesnake curled up close to my horse’s front hoof. The horse swiveled one ear towards the snake, but just walked on by. Luckily, there was no biting, but we took a different path back to the stable.
Tylikcat says
The only time I’ve run across a rattlesnake in the wild was in my early teens in the Eastern Cascades. I was on horseback. Unfortunately, my five year old brother was on a different horse nearby, and his horse did not want to be anywhere near the snake. (To be fair, he was good rider, he was just five. He was *so mad* that suddenly there was nothing he could do to control his mount.) Good times. (Really, not much happened – I took off after him and his horse, and retrieved them, and that was the last we saw of the snake. But it was very exciting at the time.)
My senior Chen student is in NM working on her master’s and they’re apparently more common? (At least, she posted a video, like, last week?)
Patricia Schlorke says
I’ve lived in southern Missouri, northeastern Oklahoma, and now DFW. I’ve seen all types of bugs. However, the scariest time I had was when I was a teenager living in Missouri and seeing a cotton mouth snake, as well as a rattlesnake in the lush grass of the back yard (not at the same time). Cotton mouth snakes you definitely leave alone. Very poisonous and deadly.
Teresa says
Bit by a brown recluse spider. Bad bad bad. Thanks to Australia I know the cure. Tea tree oil. It takes months applying daily but the skin stops rotting.
Deborah says
Manuka honey has been used on flesh eating bacteria with success.It is now sold in pharmacies in various strengths, in Australia and New Zealand.I don’t know if it is available over in the States but it is excellent.You can get Teatree Oil and Manuka Honey
together in some products sold here.Also you have killer bears and cougars!They eat people or tear them to bits.Since the Tasmanian Tiger died out we don’t have any large based predators .I prefer ours,mostly.?
KC says
UV light will make scorpions glow. Might be handy to have a small UV flashlight to use in closets. Lavender can be a natural deterrent as well if you can figure out where they’re coming in from.
Currently we’re waging a war with ants and centipedes. They’re driving us nuts. I think our latest deterrent is working though as I’ve only seen a few ants today and no centipedes.
If you want true horror stories, go to deep wet Texas. I had a Chihuhuan Tarantula that invited itself to the wall above the bed I was in. After careful maneuvering out of bed, claiming of a shoe, and then tremendous psyching myself up. I wielded my shoe as a samurai does their katana, and attacked, my downward arc at an angle to drive the spider away from the mattress in case I didn’t get it (I had no desire for the spider on the bed, alive or dead). I learned their blood looks like fuschia/magenta. I got no sleep the rest of that night. I was very proud I did not scream. I had seen one earlier in the day at the scenic overlook at Davis Mountain State Park. I have no problem with them doing their thing in their natural habitat, but I draw the line at peeping tom spiders invading my sleeping abode.
Melissa B says
I hate those!! My parents have them up in the foothills near the Appalachian mountain in an old mining town called Dahlonega Ga. The scorpions prefer the carpet than the hard woods. My son got stung by several of them one time when he slept at their house alone . He got scared in the middle of the night and wanted to climb in bed with his grandfather. Grand dad said no , so unbeknownst to grandfather my son slept at the foot of the bed on The floor and woke up with at least three stung marks in the morning. This Mama was not happy when I got him back.
Erin Valentine says
The bit with the scorpion reminded me of a scene in the Doris Egan Ivory series. In Grace Draven’s world you would bake it into a pie. 🙂
Patricia Schlorke says
Ah yes, the scarpatine pie. I agree with Ildiko, very vile pie. ?
Danielle says
We have Subterranean Wolf Sipders. There are hundreds of their burrows in our yard, and they’re friggin huge (bigger than my closed fist, smaller than my splayed hand) . They like to come hide in the shade from the house. I reached my arachnid limit and had the exterminator come out. Best $260 I ever spent.
Kas says
You know I believe I will stay in Wisconsin. Spiders are small, snakes not a big problem because for six months of the year it’s too cold for them to move. Although there are the mosquitoes…. But that”s more of a quantity problem, not so much a size problem. So yeah, Wisconsin looks good…..
Sue says
Michigan also.
Claire says
Ah, Michigan. Home, sweet home where the grass is green and the critters that bite don’t kill you.
Michael Cain says
Off subject. This video names the Kate Daniels’ genre: arcanepunk Fantasy. @1:27. https://youtu.be/1OrsSp9-Jas
viwiles says
Just that kind of week ?
Mary Obermite says
Scorpion trivia:
1. Because they are so small and can flatten themselves, they can emerge from the ceiling fans we Texans love, dropping onto what lies below.
2. They can crawl up fabric, so a big NO to the bed skirts.
3. If your husband jumps out of bed yelling, “Something bit me,” I encourage levitation and popping over to 6 feet from the bed. Yell, “Scorpion! Scorpion! Scorpion!” until he turns back the covers to find the evil beast. (True story)
4. They like to nest in your clothes if you leave them on the floor. Shake out your shoes for the same reason.
5. Caulk exterior of your house so they can’t get in. We have rock on the outside of our house, so renewing caulk is on the checklist.
6. Nocturnal, so watch your step at night if you get up in the dark.
7. In South Texas, where my dad grew up, he said boys will catch them and chase each other. We will not discuss what this says about boys versus girls.
8. Use pest control. Kill the scorpions’ food and them if you can.
Scorpions inspire a phobic fear unlike anything else. Travel in the Middle East? No problem. Sleep in my home in Texas without a flashlight for nocturnal bathroom trips? No way.
Texas. Sigh.
Fera says
Hope this help (if you haven’t already read it 🙂
https://www.shivarweb.com/1737/my-experience-with-wp-engine-wordpress-hosting/
Hannelore says
For me, it all depends on the type of bug. If I have to, I can deal with little bugs, like stinkbugs (although most of the time there is a brave souls who does not mind bugs as much as me). But I absolutely cannot deal with cockroaches. They are unnatural. They can live for nine days without their head, and a female can produce 1600 young in her nine month lifespan. When the apocalypse comes, the only sure thing to survive is cockroaches.
Patricia Schlorke says
I totally agree with you about cockroaches. I see one inside, and I jump to get it out.
Krystine says
Mythbusters tested cockroaches versus wood lice survival ability and the wood lice were better at surviving.
Eloise says
I’ve used a variety of hosting services in my previous job. Honestly, any LAMP server will do the job, even an Amazon instance, and you’ll pay less, almost certainly. What you won’t get, with many of them, is tech support that knows WP like the back of their hands, and will jump through hoops to make sure it’s set up right. Which is why you pay less. That said… a lot of hosting companies that offer more than bare bones offer WP as a plug-in option, and importing your WP on top of that is easy. If you go down that route, you could probably be up and running within a matter of hours.
Beyond that, your costs are tied to your content. I had to upgrade on my hosting to a business domain from a personal one, at some cost, because my blog was chewing too much back-end. I post far, far less frequently than you with far fewer comments. I’m not sure how big the database needs, and the memory needs for serving your blog are, but they won’t be tiny. While memory is fairly cheap, you do still pay for it on a server.
There isn’t a perfect answer but hopefully that explains why your quote was astronomical.
MagicTrix says
And no one has even mentioned fire ants (moving north, bite pain builds up), killer bees, (also moving north, destroying native bees and honey production) or the giant swarms of teeny gnats. What’s so bad about gnats? There’s just so many of them, and they get in your eyes, nose, and mouth. They are the real reason Texans talk with their teeth closed.
Ruth says
There’s a reason why I live where the air hurts my face for a large portion of the year. And all you all just proved it again.
Prospero says
In Egypt many of the locals ignore the black scorpions but they will avoid or kill the green ones because their sting is lethal while the black ones are simply very painful
Heidi says
We just moved to Texas about 2 weeks ago and have received several warnings about snakes, spiders, cockroaches, red wasps, ants etc. So far we have encountered all but the snakes however our neighbors had a baby something (I don’t remember what venomous type) on their back porch the day after we moved in. So I’m with you on the stop it please!
Dana says
Grew up in south Louisiana. Nobody here mentioned the stupid STINGING CATERPILLARS!!! Lay your hand on one accidentally and you have stigmatta for a week! and the pain! And try really hard not to stumble into a fire ant mound while trying to escape the caterpillar! And we grew up with the Mississippi River in our back yard (literally), so occasional cottonmouths and copperheads. And the cockroaches and water bugs are so non-threatening in comparison they just get squished or tossed outside. Oh, and did I mention the wharf rats the size of small cats???
Yeah, so glad we moved to Kentucky!
MagicTrix says
I was bitten by one of those “stinging caterpillars.” They’re called “asps” like the snake. But I had such a bad reaction to the sting that I had to go to the ER. So yup, yet another hidden Texas danger. This one dropped on me from a large bush. Warning: jumping up and down yelling “Get it off!, Get it off!” is likely to result in getting stung. Discovered this the hard way.
Meredith says
Oh! Those caterpillars hurt like crazy! Also, cow ants! Large bright red ant looking bugs, very painful. I grew up in northern Maine. Due to deep-freeze weather for long periods of time, most bugs there don’t get very big. Texas has been a major bug/critter/slither adjustment. After 23 years(14 of it on a farm) I now consider myself fairly unflappable. Dang! I should NOT have said that! Now some dam thing is going to scare the crap out of me for sure!
Cheryl M says
Oh goodness, so funny to read all of these! Yeah, really makes me appreciate SW Idaho. They tell me we have scorpions, but they usually don’t migrate into houses. We have black widows, so I avoid dark corners without a broom. Rattle snakes also avoid humans, and if you take your dogs hiking on local trails they recommend training them regarding snake avoidance. We are pretty low on the nasty creature scale. I like that.
Teresa says
I love living in Minnesota. The winters here kill most of what you folks have crawling around your houses, and a standard flyswatter takes care of the rest.
Siobhan says
Siobhan
Siobhan says
This is killing me. Of course I totally forgot yesterday’s promise to always copy my comments for safety.
Are you sure your giant mosquito was a mosquito and not a mosquito hawk? I’m not gonna lie, the first time I saw a mosquito the size of my thumb, I ran screaming. I was traveling with friends, we were in TN at the time, and a local member of our party kindly explained that these were *helpful* giant mosquitoes that ate regular mosquitoes.
But I am going to add to today’s gratitude list “do not have to worry about scorpions.”
P.S.: my phone is trying to help by offering up emojis for “mosquito” and “scorpion”, which I am finding more disturbing than useful.
TeejSD says
Got nothing for hosting, sorry. But plenty for pests. Living out in the country in the upper midwest (yes more cows than ppl), I will note that the skeeters & gnats are “determined” to get fed. So the trick is to find someone who is ‘extra tasty’ and stand next to them! 😉
Once you get west of the Missouri River, then rattlesnakes are definitely an issue. My advice, stay away from sunny, rocky areas in the spring cuz that’s where the snakes are warming up. Once went hiking with my Girl Scout troop in May on the sunny side of a rocky hill, and we all stepped over it, but last gal in line stepped on the rattlesnake. Didnt get bit, but for a bigger gal she sure cleared some ground. I remember loose rock flying everywhere as we all got some distance from the buzz! Maybe all the rock ricocheted confused the snake, or maybe it just wasn’t that warm yet. Picked our hiking trails with more care after that!
Robin Šebelová says
For poison lovers, go and live in Australia. For isectofobics, go and live with us in the Middle Europe. We have harmless (or almost) spiders, normal bees, no aggressive wasps or hornets, certainly no scorpions and only poisons snake – Vipera berus. Welcome to Czech republic.
Jeanne parsons says
On that giant mosquito….google CRANE FLY. It does look like a misquote but is not. Known to occasionally eat mosquito larvae
Anton says
You might be surprised at how small sachets of moth ball chips keep those creepy crawlies out. Bury full sized moth balls in the ground 1 inch deep around the perimeter of your house and most of the insects and snakes will stay out.
Meg says
We moved from Atlanta GA to near Savannah. We no longer go barefoot unless it’s daylight, well lit or we’re at the beach, in the water. Aerorthotic Flip flops are my goto footwear
Mary says
May I suggest you consider setting out scorpion traps? I grew up in Arizona and have a deathly fear of stepping on a scorpion. May I also suggest you shake out shoes before putting them on. If your large spider was a tarantula it was a good bug eater and not harmful to humans, but I sure as heck would not want it in the house either. (Shudders).
Sekimori says
Why are you looking at WP Engine? I work for a hosting company and would be glad to answer any questions…need more parameters though. 🙂
Mindy Mymudes says
The only time one of my dogs had to be snake broken was when he went down to TX for training. The man who took Quark on insisted that Texas had every poisonous snake in the US there. I believe him. Funny that came up, because Chapter, my service and otherwise doggo found a large prairie garter snake and thought to make friends with it. TX, why would ANYONE mess with it.
Susan Neace says
Apparently reaction to a brown recluse spider bite is dependent on your personal sensitity to the venom and I was not one of the lucky ones. 2 surgeries followed. I have a big dip in my thigh. Oddly enough I am still not afraid of spiders (I never saw it) but my younger sister now has a terrible phobia
Cindy says
I grew up in Oklahoma and have lived all around the country. Now I live in Virginia Beach which is tropical in the summer. The bugs are never-ending because it’s so wet and swampy. If I could, I’d go north for the summer.
Aimee says
Omg….reading all the comments here….I will never again complain about life in northern ontario. Its too freakn cold up here most of the time for any sort of large insect to survive. Though we do have bears….and moosies. ??♀️??♀️
Gretchen says
And never mind us stepping on the bugs, we have to think about our curious, stupid pets. I moved from Los Angeles to Orange County in Southern California, and for the first time in my life came upon scorpions here. They were small, and I found them because both of my cats, of course, were standing over them sniffing them, their noses an inch away.
Mary C Carnahan says
The house would be up for sale the next morning.
JustJillFL says
This reminds me of military assignment to TX.
DH employed exterminators to kill everything living in our house—except us.
Next door neighbor accused DH of harming the environment, and gave him a great deal of lip service for it.
A few weeks later, a scorpion fell from neighbor’s ceiling onto his bed, stinging him in a delicate place….a few days later, exterminator was at neighbor’s house.
DH was both sympathetic, and endlessly amused.
#ScorpionRevenge
Kimberly says
Hey, when I first moved to Texas, some 25 years ago to boonies outside New Braunfels, the scorpion population was unavoidable. Keep baking soda handy as applying damp/watery teaspoon full to sting site will help with venom. Recommend having a bug guy regularly spray house quarterly. Depending on weather, sometimes the spider population gets outrageous. Just pointed out to Mom still living in N.B. she had a tarantula in overhead light fixture this past weekend.
Trish says
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! Awesome!!! Always glad we never had orders to TX…..hubs had tons of TDY’s there, but I was good not joining him! ??
Holly says
I bought these thing from amazon that you plug into the wall and they keep those nasty critters out of the house! Safe for dogs and cats!
https://www.amazon.com/VEPOWER-Ultrasonic-Repellent-Electronic-Repeller/dp/B07VM4C5F1/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=electronic+bug+repellent+indoor&qid=1565543671&s=gateway&sprefix=electronic+bug&sr=8-1
Chris W says
My Mom said scorpions travel in mated pairs. Hoping yours was too young.
*grins* Get them fixed before then?
Maria (BearMountainBooks) says
You might try looking into “droplets.” Digital Ocean has very good prices. I know your traffic is much higher than mine, but you get your own part of the cloud (a droplet, so to speak). I can do a referral and I think you get 25 dollars off of something, but you can look into it or other cloud server providers and see if it meets your needs. We looked very briefly at a server, but, uh-huh, no. I’ve been on Digital Ocean now since November and I’m very happy with it so far.
deedee says
yikes, don’t you need pest control? i mean scorpionssssssss?!?!?! what if it bites you in your sleep?
Karen says
WP Engine – the top tier of WordPress hosting services! I’m guessing you’re being asked to pay around $300 more per year for your web hosting. If you’re spending over 3 hours per year dealing with web issues, then I’d say it’s worth making the switch. If you’re only looking for a few minor improvements then you might consider SiteGround – I’ve had really good experiences working with them.
colette dill-lerner says
So much here is about the capacity the site needs and the security levels, which I assume are lower given no transactions are taking place. A more baseline service is likely feasible but without understanding the requirements it is hard to say.
Nancy F says
Ah, Texas! Where you can buy gas for your car, ammo for your gun, and alcohol for yourself, all at the same place.
And the bugs…. *shudder*
I started a my first ever teaching position in San Antonio, and we had a cricket infestation on Day One. So they fumigated the building over the weekend, killing literally thousands of crickets. Cricket corpses were everywhere. Which attracted the fire ants, who invaded in search of a yummy poisoned cricket snack.
The teacher in the room next to me sat down at her desk, not realizing there was a cricket corpse hidden under it. She had so many fire ant stings on her legs that she went into anaphylactic shock and had to be rushed to the hospital.
I didn’t renew my contract.
Susan Downey says
We moved to Texas from Washington
State when I was a teenager. Opened the door to the back patio first day and promptly shut it. There were three huge spiders out there. My dad said they were wolf spiders. I never opened that door again!!! Between the spiders, scorpions, fire ants, and other critters, it was crazy lol! So many huge bugs.
TinaC says
Basic training, Lackland AFB, San Antonio, TX – I, and 40 or so other 18-19 year old girls, discovered the cockroaches can be two or more inches long and FLY! There’s nothing quite like going to the bathroom at 5am and being strafed by gigantic, flying cockroaches!
Deborah Armstrong says
Not only do they fly; I can tell you from my personal experience, they BITE.
I grew up in San Antonio….I have vivid memories of the Mexican Crickets (followed by piles of dead Mexican Crickets) trees full of tent worms (euww!) learning the difference between ant nests so that I knew which were Fire Ants and which weren’t.
But most important of all…I learned about Chiggers.
Tiff says
Hey yes, one of my clients uses wpengine. I can’t say I recommend it. It’s backend is.. arcane, to say the least.
Damietta says
This explains SO much about your books….ESPECIALLY the body count.
=A says
Yeah, don’t step on those. I made the mistake of walking barefoot in the dark (in the house) and one got me between the toes. Hurt like a lightning strike. Eventually the pain went away and I went to bed. Woke in the middle of the night with that entire side paralyzed and my mouth feeling full of cotton. Couldn’t even yell for help.
When we first moved to OK we averaged 8 scorpions a week in the house. Learned to shake out shoes before putting them on, and to keep drinking glasses upside down (you do not want that story). Guinea hens took care of the problem.
Chiggers, though. When you take off your socks and your skin peels off with it you have a real problem. We eventually learned that showering as soon as you come in for the evening and wiping down thoroughly with a washcloth soaked with bleach prevents a lot of misery. (Clothes go directly in the wash – no getting a second days wear.)