On Thu, 03 Jan 2019 11:56:49 -0500, John H.
wrote:

On Thu, 03 Jan 2019 11:23:21 -0500, wrote:

On Thu, 03 Jan 2019 07:34:07 -0500, John H.
wrote:

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 22:46:56 -0500, wrote:

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 16:00:26 -0500, John H.
wrote:

On Wed, 02 Jan 2019 12:48:16 -0500, wrote:

On Tue, 1 Jan 2019 20:46:13 -0800 (PST), Tim
wrote:


On Tue, 1 Jan 2019 16:26:57 -0800 (PST), Tim
wrote:

Btw, it’s 38 here now...

You can switch those numbers here more like 83
.......


I’d love to but one thing about this time of year up here

No bugs

Since I cleaned out the jungle behind the house we are pretty bug free
too all year. I am out there at night with Deuce all summer. I spray
Bifen around the house and that keeps the crawly ones out.
You know those roaches the size of your thumb that scare the **** out
of the yankees. As bugs go they really are not bad. Unlike those
northern German and Asian roaches, these guys don't really live in
your house. They come and go. If you spray a perimeter about 10' wide
you never see one.

The locals called 'em 'palmetto bugs' when I lived down there. I suppose they thought that sounded
better than 'giant roaches', which is what they are!


The big difference is they are natives and not the nasty imports that
get in your food, live in your furniture and eat the bindings out of
your books. I lived with "apartment house" roaches for a good part of
my early life in DC and these are nothing like them.

BTW "palmetto bug" is just something we say so as not to scare off the
tourists.
This is a "Palmetto Squirrel"
http://gfretwell.com/wildlife/rattus%20rattus.jpg

My daughter discovered those things when she moved to Savannah, GA.

You have them in DC. I kicked one at the Giant Food office in
Landover. Surprised the hell out of me.

Most of what we have here are Norwegian rats. But, they may be the same thing. They don't look any
different than the ones you have in your picture.

I was talking about the roach.

I agree I mostly saw Norwegian rats in DC. They were thick down there
where Harry works. The IBM office was 1801 K and at night the rats
were running around K street eating out of Marion Barry's cardboard
trash cans. They would eat a hole in the bottom and go up in there to
graze. You could kick one of those cans and a half dozen rats would
come running out.
The biggest difference between a roof rat (rattus rattus) and a Norway
(Rattus norvegicus) other than size (roof rats are smaller) is the
length of the tail. A roof rat has a tail longer than the body and
fairly thin. A Norway has a shorter fat tail.
The roof rats around here are country rats and really not much
different than squirrels. I am sure they will be sharing the same
fleas and thus the same diseases. You don't want either of them in
your attic. ;-)