Was listening to someone from Algeria who mentioned they often have issues with lizards finding their way in homes. And I was like “at that point it sounds more like a free pet than vermin.”
Also, what do you do when this happens?
At my house it’s cats.
We officially adopted two, and three more have since shown up on the porch and been invited to live with us.
I used to live at the end of a long windy dirt road in the middle of nowhere on 10 acres of mostly uninhabitable forest in the Sierra Nevada mountains. There was an old woman who lived alone past our house at the end of her own little dirt/gravel side road.
We got along with her fine mostly because she enjoyed having our dogs over (she would often spoil them with her leftovers) and since we lived in the middle of nowhere we rarely saw each other aside from passing on the road or seeing her drive past our property on her dirt road.
Anyway that old woman who lived alone said that she often cooked with the sliding door open when it’s hot so she can get better air flow through her kitchen. Well apparently a bear let itself into her house while she was cooking and according to her she turned around and there was a bear 3 feet away from her sniffing the air. She says she grabbed the cast iron pan and proceeded to hit the bear on the head as it panicked and ran back outside and off into the woods.
When we moved she actually kept our bigger dog because he was raised on 10 acres of forest and we just couldn’t bring him to the city. We tried once and he was clearly stressed out and hated the tiny yard so we brought him back and she happily took in our big old dog. Apparently he lived a happy few years with her before heart worms finally got him at the ripe old age of 15 which for that breed was basically 100.
Found a frog in the toilet once.
I’ve had a toilet frog sneak-attack my butt while I was sitting on the toilet.
Did the ER dr believe that?
Was it every bit as good as you had hoped?
No. Turns out having to remove from your toilet an uncooperative frog that was just swimming in your pee is not a good time.
… Why not simply flush?
Stinkbugs…they came invading from another hemisphere recently. Leave a window open and enjoy them everywhere by the 100s inside.
I miss the little lizards down in Florida. Sure, you’d find a tail in your closet sometime. But they’re cute.
A tail, as in they come off the lizards?
Yup, they break off and they’ll regrow.
They’re so cute tho!
My little brother was obsessed with getting anoles to bite his fingers. You know how sometimes they’ll “hiss” at you to make you go away? They’d get fingers in their mouths for that xD
Yes, lizards use it as an escape tactic. A bird might grab them by the tail and then they’ll “detach” the tail. They’ll then just regrow a new one.
More common in geckos, I think, but yes.
My kids were playing with a tail last summer. Kept twitching for almost 20 minutes. Freaky.
What’s the most peculiar unexpected visitor (or “pest”) that wound up in your home?
Mother in law.
Black bear came in my giant dog door a couple of years back.
Was it friendly?
It was looking for porridge so it was on its best behavior.
Wasn’t home, my young friend across the street was house sitting.
Had just seen mom for the last time, dying of COVID in assisted living. Had just seen my nephew who had clearly become paranoid schizo/delusional.
Dude calls, totally deadpan:
“There’s a bear in the house.”
“A black bear?! (LMAO) This is the best news I’ve had all day. Where are you?”
“In the camping room.”
“OK, your favorite gun is in there. Put a 410 shell in it and wait; he’ll go away.”
Kid called his mom, who freaked and called 911. 7 cops cars come rolling up, sirens and lights blasting, bear was chilling on the porch. LOL, he knocked my fence flat running away, never seen again.
Had to talk to a cop supervisor couple of years later. I was going to confront a neighbor about stealing my pet pig.
“Just go up there and politely ask for him back, call if you get any hassle. And BTW, aren’t you the guy who had a bear in his house a couple of years back? I was on that call!”
The owl-things keep showing up unannouced.
I talked to Stolas about them but he said he didn’t know anything about them.
A weta.
Their scientific name means ‘terrible cricket’ for the same reason dinosaur means ‘terrible lizard’: they’re big. Unlike the ones wikipedia shows you, mine was only palm-sized. They’re basically harmless, so I scooped him up and deposited him outside.
I think I saw some once. I thought it was a cockroach.
Florida scarlet snake. Disconcerting to find a danger-colored snake in your house at midnight, even if it’s harmless. Very surprised I found it before the dog or six cats did.
She’s a cutie
Red on black - okay jack
but in the middle of the night
fuck that shiteI always heard “red and black, venom lack” but this works too
I heard friend of Jack
Red and yellow kill a fellow
This is pretty much my goto. Red touch black, friend of Jack. Red touch yellow, kill a fellow.
I never knew there were so many versions of this.
Mine was:
Red touches yellow, kill a fellow
Red touches black, venom lack
So a combo of a couple of these.
Isn’t it a milk snake?
I’m no herpetologist, but Florida scarlet snake was the closest I could find.
Nor am I. It appears scarlet kingsnakes used to be considered a milk snake, but not anymore.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_snake
The scarlet kingsnake page has a pretty good line from “peepshow”:
“Red next to black, jump the fuck back, red next to yellow, cuddly fellow”,
Although that’s the opposite of what I’ve always heard. Maybe it was supposed to be wrong?
A friend of mine found one of those slither up some tiny vents and into his parents’ bathroom through the heater, in New York. All while his older brother was going number two.
When I was 14 I got a cat. The first day, he disappeared somewhere inside of the house and I couldn’t find him. I figured he was just hiding in a cozy spot. The next morning, I woke up to a dead bat at the foot of my bed. I can only guess that he had found his way into the attic crawl space and brought a fresh kill for me to enjoy.
Was the cat hurt? Bats know how to fight back.
Nope, luckily he was totally fine. He lived to be 20 years old!
Somebody’s pet ferret once showed up on my parents’ back porch in when I was in college. No way to track, and signs resulted in nothing. They gave it to my sister’s then-GF.
Cute little bugger, like a cat but friendlier. Kinda stinky though.
Cave crickets, mostly. They like sneaking in through the ventilation ducts.
A Python Snake. In England.
Turned out to be a neighbour’s pet.
Left my apartment window open once when going out, came back that night to find a pigeon just sort of wandering around. It clearly had no idea how to get back outside.
Took me a bit to corner it and catch it but I did manage to get it back out the window.
