The subject of bugs came up, and I was listing for my husband all the new types I’d been introduced to by virtue of coming to southern California. Nowadays, I can chase wasps out a window, tote spiders out in a cup, squish munching caterpillars, and brush aphids away with my bare hands, but it wasn’t always so.
It took the daily full-frontal assault of bugs and vermin that is the larger Los Angeles population to force me to realize that life was going to be a whole lot more difficult if I didn’t overcome some of my aversions. I’m not claiming to have had any phobias – mostly I have a don’t ask don’t tell attitude toward bugs. If the bugs choose to escalate the situation, then I’ll kindly ask them to leave. I’m just adverse to squishing in all but the worst cases…
Here are a few bugs I have known in LA:
Hello cockroaches. Yes, there are roaches in Denver, but in Los Angeles the cockroach is public and bold and unashamed, which is frankly appropriate given how large and fast those fuckers are. The combination of these characteristics may make identification difficult as mice possess similar qualities.
Hello Fig-eaters. Or Junebugs, or whatever the fucking hipsters are calling you today. These are actually gorgeous, but they’re large, buzzing, and can really take a person aback if you’re assuming it’s just one of the supernaturally large bees flying around and then you realize holy shit that’s a massive fucking flying beetle!
Oh yeah, the supernaturally large bees. Carpenter bees can seriously be as large as hummingbirds – at least if you discount the wings and tail. They’re like flying black ping pong balls. The good news is that they don’t really hassle you and they don’t make huge expensive nests in your walls. I seriously lost my shit the first time I was buzzed by one of these fuckers, but now I chase them around the garden trying to photograph them.
Regular bees: probably not more of a problem here than anywhere else, but it’s here in LA that I had to pay someone to tear a large hole in our wall and remove 40 lbs of bee hive. The dead bee cleanup and repair of the wall was my job. Also, myth confirmed! Dead bees stink!
Wasps. Wasps live in Colorado. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard. But again, Los Angeles: bigger, better, more popular. Here’s two kinds of wasp nests in our old apartment garage. The one on the left is from paper wasps (one of which is visible between the nest and the metal edge) which snack on caterpillars, flies, mosquitos, etc… Really a helpful flat-mate except that in this warm climate their nests can get larger than is convenient to live with.
Here’s a paper wasp, friendly enough to pose for me:
The wasp nest on the left above that looks like a blob of mud is a much more solitary variety – the mud dauber. I really really have no problem with these at all. I’d happily live with them, but they always decide to build in a place I need to be. They usually only construct one tube at a time and they do us a great favor by snacking on the black widow spiders. I always find mud daubers setting up house when I’ve seen black widows in the area.
Oh yeah, the black widow spiders.
First I came across this nicely rounded specimen keeping watch over her egg sac in the garage of our old apartment near where I’d later spy a mud dauber nest. I assume that’s her egg sac—I didn’t stop to ask.
Then there’s this leaner girl hanging out in our current garden. I’ve actually seen males and females within a few feet of each other in this yard. The males are more or less the same shape, but a bit smaller and a brown/tan mottled color as I recall. I’ve seen several of these in our garden, so I always wear gardening gloves, look before I reach, and I am on a program to clean out all recesses so that reconnaissance is easier. I also know someone who was bitten by a black widow once and have a first hand account of how the venom progresses, so I know to get my ass to the ER if I suspect I was bitten, or see the signs.
However, I’m not keen to kill these ladies when I find them. Their bites are rarely problematical, just an annoyance. In very rare cases a person can react badly to them and so it’s not something to take lightly, but these girls are a great help in that they feast on my nemesis—the termite.
Here’s some termite nymphs swarming right before we had our house tented. I can’t tell you how much I loathe these things. I know in the ground, in the forest, they do good work. Even in the garden, they gobble up organic matter and poop grainy dirt. Great. But they’re eating our house. $4000 later, they’re still snacking, and only with constant vigilance will we be able to keep a roof above our head. These particular nymphs were executed with extreme prejudice first by my shoe and then the stragglers that tried to crawl away (they’re shitty fliers) were fucking nuked.
The same day the termites were swarming, I happened to be cutting down this old hibiscus that was just plagued by white flies. A minor whitefly infestation is possible to beat back, but this shrub looked like it was decorated with spider webs for halloween. In my experience it’s the older bushes that succumb to this level of infestation and really, at that point the whole thing might have to go.
It was around this time that I came across the single MOST DISTURBING insect I’ve ever seen: the Jerusalem Cricket. This little freak show was wandering around in circles while I was working in the garden and just the mere sight of him gave me night terrors for like, well OK, two minutes. But still. Most crickets have a lovely tranquil chirp. This poor retarded cousin has a rasp. Cririririk. Also, his head looks like a bald tan ugly baby from a foreign horror film. I left him the fuck alone until a crow came along and got him.
A couple other random folks whom I’ve met in southern California:
Blue damselfly. Who can be bothered by these graceful and fleeting beauties? No one, that’s who.
Some sort of orb weaver or something. All I know is that this is one of the beefier spiders I’ve seen in LA, BUT NOT THE BEEFIEST. Always with the ostentatious webs, right in a breezeway.
Ok, not an insect or an arachnid, but is this a mouse or a rat? I guess rat, right? it has that rat face, but it was small. Also bleeding the poor thing. Well, I felt pity for this one, but not for the 12″ long (not including tail) brothers living in the walls of our house when we moved in. Also? When a cat gets a hold of the front half of a rat and leaves the back half right where I was gardening, it means Ballookey is going to grow and learn that day. Grow a little more spine and learn to hold back a whole lot of bile while I shovel it up and tote it to the trash can.
And to wrap it all up, here’s Eddie Lizard:
Who represents all scaly kind I’ve met in LA, including Snake On The Hiking Trail, and Brilliant Red-Orange Serpent who arrived in a shipment from Mexico.
This concludes my bug and critter tour of southern California, but I look forward to each new encounter – so long as I have a chance to put a few feet between me and the critter, and even better if I can collect my wits, grab the camera, and snap some more photos.
