OT: moving to southeast US Part 2 - what about BUGS!!???

I got so much good info at the forum here when I inquired about areas of the southeast that are good relocation spots, weather, etc., that here's my next question:

Who knows how bad the bugs are in any of these areas?:

Atlanta and surrounding areas such as Athens

Asheville, North carolina

Murfreesboro Tenn.

Charlotte N.C.

By bugs I mean everything from mosquitoes to june bugs, cockroaches, swarms of flies, etc.

We have our share of summertime mosquitoes, bees and big harmless spiders here in the Northwest, but I've never seen the ant home invasions that I'd experienced in So. Cal. Or the nasty cockroach action like in downtown LA or Hawaii.

If you have lightning bugs like I remember from childhood visits to New England, well that seems like it'd be a good thing.

Cockroaches in Atlanta. Big cockroaches.

And ticks. And Chiggers.

Ticks and chiggers everywhere else too and smaller cockroaches.

Least buggy is Asheville.

Never noticed many ticks or chiggers here but definitely big ol' cockroaches. And lots of mosquitoes. We don't get all the nasty swarms of flies like in Louisiana, nor do I think you'd get them any of the other places you mention.

And yes, we get lots of lightning bugs in summer which are really cool. Cicadas too, you never really see them but you hear them singing in the trees. Also very cool. Loads of crickets.

I dunno, we have all kinds of bugs here but none of them are really a pain so far as I'm concerned, other than the roaches and skeeters. Oh, and meal moths, those can get in your pantry and drive you nuts. Pets can get fleas really bad like most anywhere I guess, but flea control stuff is really good these days (Frontline etc.) so it's not been too bad.

Now hold on a minute...

What y'all are referring to as "cockroaches" aren't those nasty little black and tan German roaches that thrive in unsanitary conditions.

I like to refer to those big ugly brown roaches as "palmetto bugs".

They just like dark, semi-humid places to live, and they are easy enough to get rid of (boric acid is the gift that keeps on giving...they eat the powder, it make their inside swell up and they die, then their buddies eat the dead brethren and get the boric acid in their system, too...works great)

The bugs of the South that I don't care for are the ubiquitous red wasps, yellowjackets, redbugs (chiggers) and brown recluse spiders. Those are all fairly easy to avoid, though.

If you live in an area with sandy soil, you might encounter a little brown scorpion, or two...don't worry, they're not any worse than a wasp sting.

We do have some un-legged friends down here that you need to watch out for, namely the rattlesnake, cottonmouth, and copperhead.

Those are Argentine ants. Some baby powder sprinkled all over their trail will make them go away easily.

Oh, as long as we're at it, here's the bug profile for New York's MidHudson Valley (People call it upstate, but that's ludicrous--we're 80 miles from the Bronx, 300 miles from Buffalo...)

Mosquitos, wolf spiders and a few brown recluse, ants, house flies, fruit flies, horse flies, centipedes, storms of gnats in the summer, wasps, bees, hornets, dragon flies, cicadas, a bunch of beetles including some big cruncy hardshell beauties with pincers, ladybugs, lots of ladybugs, in fact I believe the ladybug is the official State bug...

My least favorite are the mosquitos and the storms of gnats

In my residential nighborhodd, deer, racoons, squirrels, chipmunks, moles and mice, possums, wild turkeys, skunks, the occasional red fox, rabbits, tons of woodchucks, and at night the yipping of coyotes, ubquitous garter snakes and the occasional big black snake, the occasional copperhwad and even rattler though I've never seen/heard one myself, and, increasingly...black bears.

+1 on the Boric Acid...

I know people in the south tend not to insulate their walls, but here in Iowa it's a necessity. Anyway, I blew in cellulose insulation into my walls and almost instantly all my bug and rodent problems vanished and never came back.

The cellulose is basically ground up newspapers with boric acid added as flame retardant.

Augusta, Georgia:

roaches are probably the largest biomass here.

I saw a *wave* of roaches crossing a street last year. As in, a *sheet* of the things covering the entire width of the road.

When I was a kid, I *never* saw roaches. I have a theory it has to do with the way they pickup the trash, or the infrequency of it; when I was a kid you had smaller trash cans - and they picked up everyday...

There are bugs everywhere. They just have a longer growing season in the south.

Robert

Ewww:eek:

Oh yeah, lots of people like to refer to them as that, but it's still just a euphemism for GREAT BIG FREAKIN COCKROACH!

One nice thing about all the places you posted is that they all have well-qualified exterminators. The only places I would affirmatively avoid are in backwoods locales with stagnant water. Otherwise, if bugs are enough to keep you from enjoying the South, chances are you're a world-class girl. It's nice here.

THEY TASTE LIKE CHICKEN!!! Hummmmmmmmm!

Man, that's one reason I could never live down there.