• HelixDab2@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    18 days ago

    I love seeing the bats coming out at night in the summer; I can see them in the front clearing, swooping around after moths. I’ve got a bat house, but I think that it’s been vacant for years; I need to find a better way to attract them to my home.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      17 days ago

      Knock one of the screens out of your attic and they’ll set up permanent residency in there. But, and this is a big but, they’ll shit all over the place, you’ll hear them crawling around, and many counties prevent you from doing anything to remove them or lock them out once they’re in.

      Source: was accidentally in this situation a few years ago. Our solution was to move. Okay, that’s not really why we moved, but moving solved the problem. Enjoy the bats, new residents!

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        17 days ago

        Sadly: no attic. I need try making an attractive bat roost for them. I wonder how bats feel about cedar, since cedar is rot resistant?

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          17 days ago

          I suspected that they don’t, so I asked ChatGPT and this is what it said:

          Bats generally avoid cedar houses because of the natural oils in cedar wood, which have a strong scent that many insects (including those bats feed on) and animals find unpleasant. The aromatic oils in cedar can act as a deterrent, so while cedar is commonly used to keep moths away, it often has the unintended effect of discouraging bats from roosting as well.

          If you’re considering a bat house, pine or plywood are usually better choices since these are more neutral in scent and bats find them more inviting for roosting.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            17 days ago

            I’ll keep that in mind. I live at a high enough altitude that I’m literally in the clouds pretty often (e.g., when it’s overcast everywhere else, I’m in pea-soup fog), so cedar is one of the prime choices for anything that’s going to be outside, just to keep it from rotting.

    • flora_explora@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      18 days ago

      Not sure where you live, but in central Europe (I live in Germany) you definitely have spiders, harvestmen, mites, millipedes, isopods, slugs, beetles, cockroaches (in my case cute little wood cockroaches), moths (their larvae at least) living inside and around your house. Maybe not directly inside your living room dancing on the table. Although there are some cockroaches that do run around everywhere in my home. But have a look around in your cellar, garage, any spaces that aren’t frequently heated or where you store food and you’ll find them.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        18 days ago

        we have spiders and harvestmen in abundance, but the rest is not something you will see in a house here.

        maybe you’d see isopods in a garage because they caught a ride on something you brought in from the garden, but there’s not much for them to eat so you’d likely see them dead not long after…

        I have never in my life heard of people having millipedes, slugs, beetles, or cockroaches in their house in sweden, that makes it sound like your homes are absolutely filthy for them to have stuff to eat. Also pretty sure the scandinavian peninsula just doesn’t have cockroaches, i have yet to see one in real life outside of captivity.

        • Doom@ttrpg.network
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          18 days ago

          Except that insects don’t really like filth especially cockroaches. That’s all stigma.

          But no you absolutely have critters around you just don’t acknowledge lol.

          • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            17 days ago

            Define filth. What we call spoiled food is great for basically all the critters entering our houses. That’s where the stigma comes from - if you don’t really clean your kitchen and leave scraps and crumbs in narrow spaces, that’s where they will feast.

            While I’ve yet to see cockroaches in the wild in Germany, ants inside the house can be prevented by just cleaning regularly (and not even obsessively).

            It’s not like lice for example, that really don’t care how often you wash yourself and infect anyone with long enough hair.