The insects are behaving strangely

[colorado thinker]

around here lately. I've had yellow jackets buzzing around my patio lights late at night, twice in the last month (they are diurnal), I've never seen that before and I've lived in this house since 1992.

One night a week or so ago, earwigs swarmed over my trumpet vine and ate the sides off all the blossoms. Then, they disappeared and I've seen no damage since.

There's a web spider sitting on my steps eating a moth - I've never seen a web spider do that on the ground before.

The ants that are normally on the trumpet vine during the day are swarming it at night.

What's up with this? I spend a lot of time on the patio at night, it's cooler out there, and observe the critters. Never saw this kind of behavior before. Oh, and there's no roly-polys around, anywhere. Saw some earlier in the summer but they seem to be gone . . . no lady bugs, either.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

1. I Can't Be Certain, But I Betcha Rove Is Behind It.

:rofl:

[colorado thinker]

7. No doubt!

[lost-in-nj]

2. I swear

one day I will wake up and my whole house will be one big spider web.
They are taking over the world. So many of them lately




lost

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. we have lots outdoors in the forest and parks...

because no rain for weeks. :(

on the bright side, I live right beside a pond, and no skeeter bites this year at all.

[hopeisaplace]

5. so many symbols with spiders invading...oh my

"what a tangled webb we weave when we practice to deceive"
(leaders of the world that is)

[CrushTheDLC]

20. I hear that.

I try not to kill the little bastards, if I can catch and release them, outside. But when they start crawling on you in the middle of the night, that's over the line, and it's spider splat time.

[tenshi816]

57. They're taking over my vehicle.

I have huge webs over my side mirrors, on the door handles and around the spare tire cover on the back. If I brush them off, they're back the next morning.

[Mojorabbit]

3. Your roly polys

Have appeared all over my master bathroom. I have no idea how they are getting in the house.

[hopeisaplace]

6. what are roly polys???? n/t.

[Goblinmonger]

8. Those little acrobat guys

in A Bug's Life

[hopeisaplace]

9. yikes, can't remember a bugs life...little guy has the book

I'll have to check it tomorrow, thanks :)

[Goblinmonger]

16. Picture

They are refered to as pill bugs in To Kill a Mockingbird

[hopeisaplace]

18. It needs to be said,

ewwwwwwwwwwwwww, yuk. Thanks, :)

[Jamastiene]

24. We may just have to agree to disagree.

IMHO, it's more like awwwwwwwwwwwww, aren't they cute? I have always loved watching those little bugs for some reason. I used to spend hours wathing them in the yard.

[hopeisaplace]

26. :) deal n/t.

[Jamastiene]

34. Deal. n/t

:)

[calimary]

36. Even so, this is a gorgeous photo.

Ahh... nature. Yet another work of art.

[hopeisaplace]

39. yes you're right, it is Art isn't it.

Ok, I take the "ewwwwwwwww" back, :)

[Joanne98]

62. PI The golden mean. cool

[Odin2005]

40. PILL BUGS!!!

:bounce:

[jseankil]

50. We call em Potato Bugs in these parts. /nm

nm

[LWolf]

68. We always called

the jerusalem cricket a "potato bug:"



http://www.potatobugs.com/

One of the few insects to ever give me the "willies."

[Odin2005]

72. Whoa, thats a cool looking bug!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

89. I'm the kind of person to catch the spider and release it outside

THAT thing, however, make me want to swat my monitor with a rolled newspaper. It's one notch worse than a mole cricket. Which until now was the most creepy bug I've ever seen. Luckily I've never seen one of those in the house. I'm not sure if my catch and release will stand up to a mole cricket either. :(

[colorado thinker]

10. A little bug with a hard shell

It rolls up into a ball if you touch it, and it can be rolled across the patio like a miniature bowling ball . . . fun, but not kind, I'm sure.

[hopeisaplace]

13. oh of course, thanks, we have those here as well. n/t

[Jamastiene]

21. You don't know what a roly poly is?

:wow:

Some people call them pill bugs and some call them sow bugs. Here is link to more info on them:

http://insectlore.stores.yahoo.net/rolpilkit.html

[Speck Tater]

27. Growing up in MI in the 1940's we called them BB bugs

But we never could get them to fit in our BB guns.

[Jamastiene]

33. They do kind of look like BB's, don't they?

I wouldn't recommend trying to put them in BB guns. I think you are supposed to keep guns clean and all that. I'm a bad southerner. I don't know much about guns, except they need to be kept clean.

[hopeisaplace]

28. I'm such a girl :)

I know now, we have them as well, of course.

[Jamastiene]

35. I'm a girl too, but I was a little tomboy-ish

growing up. :P

[hopeisaplace]

38. I was a girly girl,

:P :pals:

[tenshi816]

58. Wood lice. n/t

[Jamastiene]

11. I don't know, but I still can't

get the image of bees with their backs on the ground steadily trying to fly at night up in NY back in June 1995. I thought that was so strange. My bandmate's mother explained that the sugar gets cold in their bodies and makes them heavier at night or something like that.

Maybe your insects heard the terruh alerts. Some are doing whatever they want to do because they figure they are going to die anyhow under the current regime. Some are working overtime and acting all excited because they are terrorized by what the news hacks are telling them. And some just don't care any more, so they decided to get drunk early. :shrug:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

17. was it a wet night?

they can't fly when their wings get wet.

[Jamastiene]

25. Nope. Not wet.

I don't think it rained the whole time I was there. It was rather cold that night though. And they did live really close to a nuclear power plant. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not. :shrug:

[salvorhardin]

12. Did you change your patio lights recently?

Maybe put in different colored lamps? Sounds like something is throwing off the circadian rhythm of your creepy crawlies.

[colorado thinker]

15. Nope, nothing new on the patio . . .

The lights have been out there about 5 years - long life bulbs.

There are a lot of spiders, however. Garter snakes, too. And the mice are coming in the house, in August, which is unusual (and deadly, too since I have a 20 lb. feral male cat. They don't last long)

[Jamastiene]

32. Okay, here is a better informed opinion.

Since you mentioned the mice coming in, I thought about my current problem with the insects. We have had way more ants than usual come inside recently. There were probably a hundred of them on one grain of sugar the other day. And when you mentioned the mice coming inside, it triggered a memory...a good one, kind of. My grandmother always used to say that when the ants come inside like that and are that busy in the month of August and when mice start coming inside the house in August, it means an early winter. That could be it. Maybe.

[undergroundpanther]

51. Ants..

My moms birthday cake was invaded..It was on my sisters kitchen table like ten minutes. And suddenly there were ants. I got them off. But dang..we had no clue when they got in for there were no ants in her house until they got on the cake.We were all joking about the ants acting fast because the cake was organic so the ants knew this one wouldn't kill them if they ate it.

[Jamastiene]

53. That reminds me of a really interesting ant story.

A long time ago, my aunt (as in mother's sister, no pun intended :blush:) and I were in the kitchen where we used to live. The phone rang, so I went over to pick it up. This was back when we kept our cordless on the "hook."

While I was standing there I noticed army ants, thousands of them crawling out from the phone jack. They just kept coming and coming. More and more of them kept coming into the house. They didn't stop. They kept marching. They marched into the kitchen and behind the refrigerator. We watched them in disbelief.

We pulled the refrigerator out and watched them as they went back down under the floor through the water line. They stopped for nothing, not even a crumb. They kept marching like that for as long as it took for all of them to get through the tiny little hole. We went outside and opened the little door leading under the house and saw them going out through the vent. We watched them march all the way down the front yard to the storm drain.

I followed them to the other side of the storm drain. They marched across the road in shifts. Not one of them got hit by a car, even though that road was a well traveled road. They actually kept their formation and marched across in shifts a few hundred at a time in between cars passing by. They finally marched into some thick bushes that I could cross. I watched long distance until I lost sight of them.

It was unbelievable. They were really marching. It was like they had a mission and we were just an obstacle in their path. I'll never forget that. They didn't stop and munch or do the usual ant invasion routine. They were just passing through. I still wonder what was up with that, to this day.

[newspeak]

74. I have an ant story

At night I put Burt's Bees foot creme on my feet at night. We were staying at my in-laws and they insisted that we sleep in their room. I put my foot creme on and went to bed, suddenly I felt something crawl on my leg--I threw the covers and there was these small ants crawling on my feet!!!!!! Talk about hopping around--I was yelling at my hubby "HELP ME GET THEM OFF." I washed the foot creme off and didn't get much sleep that night!!!

[Jamastiene]

75. One time... one time

when I was a kid, I crawled into my sleeping bag (I have always slept in a sleeping bag, or at least since I was 9 years old) and there was a small fuzzy fast moving spider in the bag with me. I came out of that fart sack so fast, my head was spinning. I'm terrified of spiders for some reason. Ever since that night, I have inspected my sleeping bag before going to bed. I don't think twice about spraying it with bug spray either. I'll take my chances with the bug spray. It's like my invisible force field. I haven't noticed much brain damage from it yet.

You story sounds very similar. It is hard to go back to sleep after an experience like that, isn't it?

[RebelOne]

55. Usually in the summer, the ants invade my house.

I don't dare leave any leftover dog food in my dogs' dishes. But this year, I have not seen a single ant.

[Jamastiene]

73. They are all over here at my house this summer.

:P

They told me to tell you, "hello." :hi:

[RebelOne]

76. Please don't tell them to visit me.

Seriously, it is weird that I have not seen any ants this summer. I'm in North Georgia and I have not even seen any fire ants yet.

[Jamastiene]

87. They are all up here at my house too, the fire ants.

They sting me every time I go outside. They have no shame. They told me to tell you hello too, only they did it in a threatening way, like, or else. :scared: I sometimes picture waking up with them crawling all over me, saying things like, "You got that foot?"
"Yeah, I got this one. You get the other one."
"Everybody now! Heave! We got a long way to go before we drag this one to the mound."
:scared:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

14. some thoughts...

Are the Yellow Jackets bigger than normal? they could be European hornets, which are active at night.
http://www.ppdl.purdue.edu/PPDL/weeklypics/4-3-06.html

Earwigs love Trumpet vines! and other soft leafed plants.
Weird that you haven't seen any since...

You don't usually see spider webs on the ground because rain washes them away. I'm guessing you haven't had much rain lately.


the ants... I have no idea.





***This weekend on Book TV***
*Sen. Byron Dorgan, Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-dead Politics Are Selling Out America
*Sharon Weinberger, Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld
*Jeff Goodell, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future
*Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
*Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1891706

[colorado thinker]

19. Yeah, earwigs love trumpet vines

We've had an infestation of earwigs the last three or four years, the vine has been chewed down to stubs, but not this year. Have seen very few of them until that one night, they were all over the vine, the ground, the patio furniture, etc. Then, they disappeared again. It's drier than normal, but we have a some rain in the last couple of weeks.

The spider on the step is not on a web, the moth was dead to begin with and he's just taking advantage of it I guess. Still weird.

Don't know about the size of the wasps, I don't want to get that close.

[undergroundpanther]

47. Earwigs

Gross little bugs, BUT.. the mothers actually raise their young and take care of them and protect them ..the sort of stuff you expect out of mammals.So much we do not know about the Animals and their intelligences and consciousnesses. BTW Toads love earwigs,annoyed with earwig infestations,grab a few toads.Toads are cute too.

[kineneb]

85. chickens like earwigs, too

Henrietta loves them (mmm, tasty). Poor thing just finished molting and is covered with little pin feathers...she looks like a hedgehog.

Got earwigs, borrow a chicken.

[B3Nut]

69. Here's a good European hornet site

http://www.muenster.org/hornissenschutz/hornets.htm

Interesting stuff, and some great photos from German entomologist Dr. Elmar Billig.

Todd in Beerbratistan

[Rene]

22. With us it's our bats. We live lakeside....on a steep hill.

We've always had bats that sweep thru the trees at night.....just out at the edge of the light. It's been great because we have never had mosquitos/gnats or those critters bother us at night.
When you're sitting out, after a cookout, chatting and watching the late -- you'd just see an occasional black shape fly around the trees that surround the house. They've never bothered us...one got in the house accidentally years ago....just captured and tossed it back out.

You could sleep out on one of our decks and never get bitten by a bug. The bats get rid of them all.

Last night we noticed the sky between the trees is F I L L E D with bats soaring around the sky/trees.

I h a v e n e v e r s e e n s o m a n y b a t s near our home. It's really strange.
I wonder where they all go to sleep during the day.
I guess because CT has had so much rain these last 3 or 4 months lots of bugs must have been born, thus more bats to eat them all.
Is Mother Nature in balance or not?

[colorado thinker]

23. We've had lots of bats around here, too

and several reports of rabid bats.

I'm thinking this is one more subtle sign of climate change?

[sleipnir]

31. Wow! I know what you mean. This is what I see each night out on my porch

Why won't he go away? He's starting to scare the kids in the neighborhood...

[AZBlue]

29. I have NO scientific info to back this up, but -

- maybe the changes in weather patterns (ie, global warming) is changing their habits as well?

[survivor999]

30. Signs?

[3dman]

37. I heard something about cockroaches

swarming the Whitehouse.

For six years now.

[windbreeze]

43. HAH...that's a good one....

Welcome to DU...yes, there seems to be a real mess of them taking over...
wb

[3dman]

66. Thanks!

:toast:

[Cleita]

44. My thoughts exactly!

:rofl:

[hopeisaplace]

45. yah and the irony is, they're the only thing that'll survive a Nuke

I think they live forever.
Just wanted to cheer ya up. :hurts:

[midnight]

71. I had not heard about the cockroaches investing the W.H.

But when the elder bush was living at the W.H. I heard barbara was swimming with the rats in the W.H. pool.

[Tinksrival]

41. Where have all the lightening bugs gone?

When I was a child it took no time at all to fill a jar. The kids the other night had trouble finding three. Any one else see a drop in lightening bug population?

[undergroundpanther]

48. Last year very few out here

But this year they are more plentiful. The yard has that glitter effect again. I have been asking spirit to bring back the butterflies and lightningbugs..I think it heard me,.I see alot of butterflies out this year too.

[orleans]

54. i'm in dupage county too--i can back you up on the lack of

lightening bugs.

too bad. i love lightening bugs. and so do the kids. they're almost magical.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

82. There was something recently on tv about that...

Maybe on Discovery or another science-type of channel? Anyway, they said that all the man made lights mess up the built in system of the firefly to procreate. Apparently, the fire in the firefly is their way of saying, "I'm hot and horny!" And because we mess up their systems, they aren't able to find their mates, thus drastically cutting down the baby firefly population. You have to go to areas where there are very few electrical disturbances. :(

[Cleita]

42. Uhm, sorry I thought you were talking about the two-legged

insects in Washington that we call our government.

[undergroundpanther]

46. I've seen quite a bit of weird animal behavior

A little bird flew into the car when the door got opened one day didn't want to get out of the car.The birds have been strange around here perching and moving in ways that are off. The bugs are off too.. Either it's global warming,all the pollution is making them sick or..it's a warning about something else.

A week ago I saw a snake on the side of the road, looked like a blacksnake .He was just writhing around in crazy loops. Like he was trying to tie himself into a knot. I watched it swirl around frantic for ten minutes maybe more,wondering what to do until I saw it was not injured. So I got a long forked stick and picked it up and when I did he hung there for a second limp(he wasn't a hog snake) than the snake 'woke up' and behaved like a normal snake,holding himself up,bracing his body on the stick flicking his tongue (was it a seizure?).I put him in some taller grass near some trees and he slithered away like nothing was wrong. Later walking down the same road,I saw another dead snake a different kind of snake a smaller one)on the side of the road later frozen in mid writhe.Weird.

[upi402]

49. I saw a humming bird yesterday and it's almost FALL!!!!

Those guys swing through in Spring from what I have seen. Can't recall ever seeing one in Fall or late Summer.

[skids]

52. There's a strangely behaving thing in the woods next door.

...it seems to like to ride it's lawnmower at odd hours of the night, and a couple of weeks ago it cut down the corner of the raspberry bush patch which was 2/3rds on it's property. Why any sane creature would cut down a perfectly good raspberry patch is beyond me.

Seriously, though, not much strange to report up here other than a couple, (two exactly, actually) beautiful dragonflys which I've never seen around here before, and the leaves on the trees staying on way too long and shading the house well after it is quite nippy.

Oh and last night a single songbird sung at 2am.

Funny thing about the dragonflys, though. One decided it would park itself (they seem like to pick a spot and stick with it -- if you scare them off they'll return there) on my back walkway, in exactly the same spot, relatively, that the other decided to pick on my front walkway.

[zippy890]

60. DRAGONFLIES Swarms of them!

I notice you 're from central MASS- here on the north shore of boston, we've had swarms of dragonflies all summer, talked to co-workers from other towns around have them too.

they're kind of pretty, and I'm told they eat mosquitos, so I'm not minding them - though it is definately strange. I noticed how they pick spots to hang around, like they're territorial.

on the bird singing at night - sometimes we've had mockingbirds singing all night-quite loudly - I looked it up, those are male birds looking for mates.

used to live in Northampton went I went to UMASS - love it out there

[skids]

63. Western MA actually.

I'm right near Noho. I love it out here too, but it's looking as the years go by that if I ever want to be employed again I'm going to have to move :cry:.

[Jamastiene]

88. Lots of Dragonflies here too.

I was in a band named Dragonfly. The other band mates noticed that everywhere I went there were dragonflies all around me. It's true too. They fly over to me even at school and hover while they look me in the eye. They don't seem to be very threatening or anything, just always around in spring and summer. I wonder if the dragonflies are trying to tell me something? Could they be my power animal?

[marions ghost]

56. insects

can indicate a lot about weather, state of the environment and climate changes.

Some of the behavior I'm seeing re. insects on the east coast this year is associated with more dryness and heat. Dunno if that's the same in Colorado.

Last year we had a very hot dry summer. Hoards of millepedes (technically arthropods, shrimp family) came inside as it was more cool and damp inside than out. I googled and found that they like dampness--they nest in damp ground and do NOT reproduce indoors. It was so hot and dry outside last summer that I had a hunch it might decimate the population and interrupt their breeding cycle for this year. No insecticides were used. Sure enough this year, not a single millepede to be seen, even though an individual can live for 7 years! I think the drought wiped them out. After last year's bumper crop, nobody believed me when I predicted this. Changes can occur very suddenly in nature. People don't realize what a delicate balance it is.

The very oldest known land animal, Pneumodesmus newmani, was a centimeter-long millipede.

[tenshi816]

59. The Rapturites will surely see this

as yet another sign that the end is nigh.

[NNN0LHI]

61. Same thing near Chicago

I was walking the dog the other night with a flashlight around midnight and I noticed the bug activity was abnormally high compared to other years. I watched them for a while. Thousands of them. I figured it was the heat and humidity which are both been running high this year around here.

Mosquitos are pretty bad this year too. But I have seen that happen before when we get a lot of rain like we have this year.

Its too early for the lady bugs to swarm around here. Another month and they will go nuts.

Don

[bleedingheart]

64. Our winters here in PA have not been cold enough to kill off a lot of bugs

that normally wouldn't live so long...

additionally there are different varieties of all insects.

Hell I have both American and European honeybees in my yard.. and they pollinate at different times.

[Holly_Hobby]

65. Earwig repellent

Go to a pool supply store and get a small bag of diatomaceous earth (D.E.). Sprinkle it around the base of the trumpet vine. D.E. is like tiny shards of glass - earwigs won't walk on it. Wash your hands, though - if you get it in your eyes, it scratches. Don't sprinkle it while it's windy, either. D.E. won't harm anything larger than an earwig, it's safe.

[elehhhhna]

70. uh, it's a dessicant and will harm frogs, toads, etc.

we use it in the pool filter and if there's a small spill it's hell on any lizards or gekkos that run through it...

[Holly_Hobby]

80. Wouldn't know about reptiles

No reptiles here. Does a great job on earwigs and fleas.

[meisje]

67. The world is ending or try laying off of the weed

[colorado thinker]

77. Since I'm weed free,

Should I spend all my savings and go out with a bang?:woohoo:

[meisje]

83. Maybe that is the problem, smoke some weed and then ask the insects

maybe they will tell you.

[Marie26]

78. Global warming?

This has been an unusually hot summer & maybe it's throwing the insects out of whack. In "An Inconveniet Truth", Gore talked about how the warming was causing some caterpillars to be born earlier in the winter, throwing the bird & caterpillar populations out of sync. If the birds migrate back later, it's too late to catch caterpillars, so they might be catching roly-polys instead. W/o roly-polys, the spiders can't catch enough to eat w/a web. Ants get overheated & wait till nightime to work. So then diurnal animals who eat ants are now are left w/nothing to eat, & swarm trumpet vines instead, etc. The ecology of a system is so finely balanced that it only takes one missing link for the whole food chain to fall apart. Maybe global warming is already creating havoc in the animal world.

[colorado thinker]

79. I think you are absolutely right

and we need to watch closely this fall what the patterns are.

[debbierlus]

81. All I know is that the bugs are getting bigger, and I have seen a couple

I have NEVER seen before.

I saw one that looked like a cross between a fly and a beetle with what looked like green mold on its back. About the size of a quarter (longer). YUCK!!!!!!!!

[tinfoilinfor2005]

84. We watch the birds a lot during hurricane season, living in a hurricane

zone. Sometimes we stay till the last minute, unable to decide whether to leave or stay. But when all the birds leave, that's not a good sign, and then I can finally convince hubby that it is time to go. But when there are a lot of birds hanging around and acting pretty normally, he won't leave. I leave, though...I'm not a bird brain. :)

[lonestarnot]

86. Did they do anything else since I was last here? Maybe we should

put them on the plane with the motherfucking snakes. That's a motherfucking snake on a plane.