Toba
07-09-2011, 05:45 PM
Years ago when we had only been in our current home for about a year, a neighbor cut down a tree on the side of his house closest to ours. Two mornings later, the phone rings while DH and I are still in bed and I hear him yammering on with his mother and then abruptly says, "I gotta GO!" I'm still mostly asleep and want to keep sleeping. DH rips the covers off me and pulls me out of the bed .... carpenter ants were crawling on us, the bed, the bedroom floor. Let me tell you, it took me WEEKS to sleep in my bed after that. We called an exterminator right away, he did his business and then they were gone ... he was sure that it was directly related to the neighbor cutting down his tree which must have been the carpenter ants' home at the time.
Cut to 14/15 years later, and DS woke me up (he crawls into bed with me after DH gets up for work), freaking out because there was a carpenter ant crawling on my arm. SHRIEK!!! I tore the bedroom apart and found nothing else. The next week, we found one walking around on the Pergo floor on the first floor in the family room (my bedroom is on the second floor). Again took the room apart and found nothing else. These are the first carpenter ants I've seen in 14/15 years.
DH usually sprayed around the perimeter of the house with undiluted pesticide once or twice a year because we have an unusually large population of spiders here and DH is extremely allergic to spider bites (it's so weird, he gets bit by them frequently .... I don't know anyone else that's been bitten by a spider, including myself). He hasn't sprayed in a few years because of DS and the spider population is again thriving (at least I don't have to listen to the crickets anymore).
But something weird is going on ... DH walked into our rarely used guest room (which shares the outside wall of one of two flower beds in our front yard) and found TONS of dead gnat-like creatures all along the outside wall. He also found a bunch of them behind the couch in our family room that shares an outside wall with our backyard (no flower beds or bushes or any vegetation of any kind) ... all dead. I don't understand where they're coming from or why they're dead because DH didn't spray this year again. I sit on the couch a lot where some of the dead bugs were found ... I don't remember any gnats flying around. Maybe the occasional mosquito or house fly that flies in while we're letting the dog out or something ... but nothing out of the ordinary.
Should I have an exterminator come out? For two carpenter ants? And already dead bugs? DH wants to do it himself (spray the perimeter and put powder up in the attic, which is exactly what the exterminator did years and years ago) and he found the stuff at Lowe's or Home Depot, just hasn't bought it yet. I have the creepy-crawlies already just typing this out.
Cut to 14/15 years later, and DS woke me up (he crawls into bed with me after DH gets up for work), freaking out because there was a carpenter ant crawling on my arm. SHRIEK!!! I tore the bedroom apart and found nothing else. The next week, we found one walking around on the Pergo floor on the first floor in the family room (my bedroom is on the second floor). Again took the room apart and found nothing else. These are the first carpenter ants I've seen in 14/15 years.
DH usually sprayed around the perimeter of the house with undiluted pesticide once or twice a year because we have an unusually large population of spiders here and DH is extremely allergic to spider bites (it's so weird, he gets bit by them frequently .... I don't know anyone else that's been bitten by a spider, including myself). He hasn't sprayed in a few years because of DS and the spider population is again thriving (at least I don't have to listen to the crickets anymore).
But something weird is going on ... DH walked into our rarely used guest room (which shares the outside wall of one of two flower beds in our front yard) and found TONS of dead gnat-like creatures all along the outside wall. He also found a bunch of them behind the couch in our family room that shares an outside wall with our backyard (no flower beds or bushes or any vegetation of any kind) ... all dead. I don't understand where they're coming from or why they're dead because DH didn't spray this year again. I sit on the couch a lot where some of the dead bugs were found ... I don't remember any gnats flying around. Maybe the occasional mosquito or house fly that flies in while we're letting the dog out or something ... but nothing out of the ordinary.
Should I have an exterminator come out? For two carpenter ants? And already dead bugs? DH wants to do it himself (spray the perimeter and put powder up in the attic, which is exactly what the exterminator did years and years ago) and he found the stuff at Lowe's or Home Depot, just hasn't bought it yet. I have the creepy-crawlies already just typing this out.