Update: apparently the brown marmorated stink bug has been observed in Britain since 2014, emerging six years after I left. Do with that information what you will.
There are black beetle stink bugs too, that look like wood beetles....found out the hard way it was not a wood beetle....my greatroom smelled like rancid butter or grease.
I live in Philadelphia which is 1 hour south of Allentown. The stink bugs are the worst. I havent seen as many recently though. We have a new invasive species called the spotted lanternfly.
I live near Allentown. What a way to get noticed! The stink bugs are totally disgusting. They seem prehistoric! Wait until you see the equally gross and invasive spotted lantern fly.
We have had green stink bugs (shield bugs) on our runner beans for as long as I can remember. There is a native green one in the UK which is harmless and doesn't need much control. Then there is the Southern green one native to mainland Europe which was introduced in 2003 which will destroy your runner beans and everything else. Of all of the stink bugs there are over 30 species in the UK according to the RHS and RSPB. I had to look this up a few weeks ago to save our harvest and think we had our first invasion from the South. I've seen the brown ones but to me, where I am, they are rare so I am unsure when I saw them. Also seen a firefly in our garden last year. I had no idea what it was. I didn't want to use the garden hose and soak everything as I knew I'd miss the flying target - well lose sight of it while I attach the hose and turn the tap on, so I opted to run inside screaming waving my arms around like there was swarm with the intention of returning to safety to try to find out what nuclear creature is invading us. After some research I came across the Natural History Museum website which told me it was the "Lampyris noctiluca" glow worm which was most commonly found in Britain. Never seen one before or since and when I was younger I lived right on a woodland path and thought I had seen all bugs... I was wrong, soooo wrong!
I don't know what happened to his face but that was a hellova mosquito!! He must be allergic or he was stung by a bee or something else! That's not right!!
@@AnnieWarbux Imagine your body reacting to a new chemical that has never been introduced to it before. In multiple small locations. He's also probably allergic to an extent. I have a horrible time with fleas from dogs. They absolutely love my blood and get decent sized welts from bites.
Once we drove on a road through a swamp on a June night, and the air was filled with fireflies. When we got to the top of the hill, we looked back to see acres & acres of marshland glowing with an ethereal light. It was magical and ephemeral, and I will never forget it.
Ooh, sounds beautiful! Where you in the South, by chance? Louisiana or Alabama maybe? I have read in older fiction that fireflies would move about in swarms in the South about a century ago and that it was a beautiful seasonal event. I'm happy when I can count 10 in one evening.
@@karenwilliams4152 I'm in Ontario, Canada, and the swamp was in Grey County. I should have said, there was a mist over the marsh, which is why it was so unusual looking.
Gretchen my area doesn't have fireflies! I met them in North Carolina where they're called lightening bugs! Scared me! Thought they were a flashlight shining through a screen door! I took one home but guess they die in climates similar to the UK!
During the southern summer nights, my sisters and I would be outside catching as many fireflies as possible. We would put them into clear glass jars that had holes in the lids. It was fun to see those jars all aglow, shining into the dark.
Right! In 2009 we had an infestation in the area where I live. To combat them they heated our houses to 105 degrees and then fumigated. We had to find a hotel of course, and wash literally EVERYTHING in bleach (twice)
Bed bugs was something mythical for almost a century in the US until the massive illegal immigration of the last 2 decades, now everyone I know has had a bed bug infestation.
@@Vicus_of_Utrecht "Bed bugs can be found all over the world, but perhaps surprisingly, the worst infestation problems tend to occur in developed countries where people use bed frames and soft bedding. Between 1930 and 1980, they were almost eliminated because chemicals like DDT were used to tackle infestations, but since DDT was banned, there’s been a huge increase."
@@engletinaknickerbocker5380 In the U.S., the problem is SOLELY the illegal immigration vector. It was unheard of barely 20 years ago, decades after DDT usage ended. As you apparently just InvestiGoogled and copy/paste from an unamed link, you don't seem well versed in this topic and I advise you to prethink before responding to me.
@@Vicus_of_Utrecht I think you're incorrect for the most part. I like to quote actual statements that make sense. If you disagree you can find something else on the internet without having to come up with your own, in your case, an 'unenlightened' opinion. You saying that bedbugs come solely from illegal immigrants is incorrect. I doubt you've ever even studied the issue. Even the CDC says, "Everyone is at risk for getting bed bugs when visiting an infected area. However, anyone who travels frequently and shares living and sleeping quarters where other people have previously slept has a higher risk of being bitten and or spreading a bed bug infestation." If you don't want there to be any bedbugs in your bed, don't travel anywhere, and demand that all your sleeping companions do the same if you can. I work in a hospital and if a patient comes to the hospital with the little critters there is a specific protocol for ridding the pests from clothing and bedding before going anywhere else in the facility. A long time ago, DDT was sprayed near humans like human disinfectant fog. Now, it isn't.
One of my cats hunted down a stink bug once. He was so proud of himself as he was eating his kill. Almost immediately he started shaking his head and backing up. Instant regret. He never went after them again. 😸
I tried moving one off of my desk when I was about six. Damn little thing kept me from doing my homework on said desk that day. Had to move to the dinning room table.
I love cicadas! Their song is the soundtrack to my childhood, actually lifelong summer nights. A friend moved here from Cali, she and her husband had no idea about them. They'd see the shells on the side of their house, step on them & realize they're empty. She called one day, explained it to me and said wtf are these prehistoric mud bugs!?😂
We get those in Texas too, down toward the coast. In really bad years, you have to pull off the highway every mile or so to attempt to wipe them off your windshield. For God's sake, you don't want to use your wipers or you'll never get the bug juice off.
For those you "should" encounter, I highly recommend the Praying Mantis. It is a truly extraordinary bug, that I highly doubt can be found in the UK. They look dangerous, with their little "scythe hands," but that's strictly for catching food (other bugs), not harming people. And the best part about them is, when you look at them, they turn their heads and look at YOU! I really do think these insects are INTELLIGENT! They just can't talk to us in words, to let us know. Warning: Some of them also get quite huge...
@@kns6958 Had one land on my shoulder once, and at no point did I feel like it was dangerous. I remember it looking right at me, from inches away, and the two of us just "stared" at each other, for a few seconds. But when I reached up to touch it with my finger, instead of attacking me, it flew off.
Largest mantis I'd ever encountered was a FOOT LONG! It wasn't very adept at flying (obviously), but the damn thing slapped me in the face before it landed. I was about to fight until I noticed it was HUGE
If you think mosquitoes are wankers, let me introduce you to the FIRE ANT. Those are little demonic beasts that are straight from the pit of hell. 🔥🐜 😱
OMG, OMG, OMG, brown marmorated stinkbugs, OMG. I live in a third floor condo in a 100+ year old building in Chicago. Three years back, I was sorting through some clothes in my closet and found one of these previously unknown to me critters just nestled there, doing nothing. Not moving, not stinking. Just existing. After the obligatory race around the apartment shrieking like a banshee I returned to the closet...there it sat, impervious. Since it didn't look like it was going anywhere, I fired up the internet and did some quick research...yikes. The (only) good news was that in the fall (it was), they looked for somewhere cozy to overwinter and went dormant. They didn't move around, they didn't look for food, they just went into a stupor for the duration - you could shriek in their brown marmorated ears (do they have ears?) 'til kingdom come, they were busy elsewhere. So, having at this point read about the stink, I carefully scooped him up and carried him outside and dumped him. Went back, tossed the shirt in the laundry basket and continued sorting...found two more. Eeek does not adequately express my emotional state. Fast forward to spring. No further sightings...until one night as I sat surfing the net at my kitchen counter, I heard an erratic buzzing sound rumbling toward me, and then, thud. A brown marmorated stinkbug had flown across the room like a woozy, overloaded cargo plane and smacked into the wall behind me. WTF!? I scooped him up - he was moving, but very slowly. Don't know if it was concussion or just the recent return to this plane of consciousness. Out he went. Over the next week or so, a few more showed up and got the same heave-ho. Then nothing. Until fall. And then, all hell broke loose. They started an all-out assault, seeking any possible opening to come in from the approaching winter. I caulked all the windows shut, but still I was finding some. And then...I saw it. A brown marmorated stinkbug, sticking his brown marmorated head out from...one of the vents of my window air conditioner. The damn things were coming in through the outside vents and wending their way through the machine to pop out in the winter haven of my bedroom! Steps were taken. Fast forward to 2020, the year of Covid-19, national civil unrest, and the presidential election. It's September. They're coming. Pray for me.
AbsentWithoutLeaving Were you able to stop them from coming in through your air conditioner? I’m thankful it wasn’t me.because my nerves have been shot and I think a heart attack would be my fate.
One thing you can do if you want a more lethal solution. Buy a small ozone generator. Turn it on, close the bedroom door, sealing the bottom, And go out with a good book for coffee and a slice of pie for 8 hours or so. When you get back, turn off the ozone generator, open a window to air the place out, and hit the fitness center for an hour - you don't want to breathe in too much ozone yourself. Anything in that bedroom that requires oxygen will have expired from ozone poisoning, including cockroaches, bedbugs, mold, and mildew. Give everything a good vacuum, and you're golden.
As someone who has been around many, many stinkbugs ever since I was a kid, "a woozy, overloaded cargo plane" is a hilarious and accurate description of how they fly. Thank you for writing this comment.
Laurence, re. your horrendous encounter with mosquitoes: what came instantly to mind was that fairytale giant at the top of his beanstalk who exclaimed, Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Deep in the American South they grow the mosquitoes large enough to kill cattle. I hear swarms of mosquitoes with thousands upon thousands swarming large enough to see them like clouds bother the wildlife north of the Canadian border in the summer. Here in central North Carolina we get both kinds - the Egyptian and Asian Tiger mosquitoes. You can't stop them by getting rid of all the standing water in your yard, they just don't grow as big, and come from your neighbor's yard to you.
We had them in central TX. They were everywhere on summer evenings. They seem to be going away, though. Don't live in TX anymore, but haven't seen one since childhood.
As a Brit living here, I was shocked at those long legged centipedes in my house. They run way too fast, and when you finally squash one, the legs keep twitching 😱
House Centipedes are actually quite beneficial. They consume less desirable insects such as silverfish and cockroaches. If you can, let these "wall raptors" be.
Those house centipedes are actually from Europe. Fortunately for the Americas, they seem to prefer human dwellings and haven’t become destructive invasive species, just creepy as Hell. I don’t have them in my apartment because my cat eats them.
@@spindalis79 Beneficial, but you also may want to look for damp spots in your house like a leaking basement, wet crawlspace, or leaky window flashing. They need a certain amount of humidity to live...
As a kid my friends and I use to get cicadas tie a string around them and keep as pets. They would fly around for awhile then we would let them go. Also their shells were great for scaring the crap out of others. We would pick them off the trees and place on an unwitting person 's shoulder. Once they saw it the show would begin: screaming, jumping around trying to get shell off. Ahhh....good times
My bro & I collected the cicada skins off the trees and made armies of them, the Spectral Insectoid Army. They'd fight the Green Plastic Army Dude Army, and the formidable Clay Men Army (which can regenerate!). Happy childhood memories!
Cicadas are probably the noisiest insects I have ever encountered. There are a lot of them in the Carolinas and, of course, they are particularly abundant and noticeable in the rural areas.
I had to chuckle when you mentioned stink bugs! My late brother had a surprise run-in with one of them some years back, and I shared the tale at his funeral back in March of this year. He was a former Marine, and loved beef jerky. SO much so that he generally always had a bag of it open and with him. This was especially true if he was gaming (or any other activity on one of his several computers). One afternoon he was munching away on a bag of his favorite flavor of dried meat while doing some computering. As he was engaging in the repetitive action of hand-in-bag, grab-meat, put-meat-in-face, chomp-down-on-meat, he felt what he described as something popping inside his mouth. His immediate reaction was to think "oh, cool, a fat-pocket in my dried cow chunks!". This was VERY quickly replaced by a sudden and intense urge to eject the afore-mentioned meat from his mouth as he realized he'd just chomped down on a stinkbug. Apparently one of them decided it liked beef jerky, too, and invited itself into the bag of meat-nuggets when no-one was lookin'. My brother's descriptive comment to me about the experiences during the few seconds immediately following the "pop" were that stinkbugs taste exactly like they smell. Needless to say, this tale had equal reactions of disgust and humor from the assorted funeral-goers! I will forever associate stinkbugs with his memory. I think he'd have wanted it that way....
When I mow my lawn, I often get an escort of dragonflies snapping up gnats that come up after the mower passes over. It's not unusual to have 5 or 6 of them hovering around at once.
So Who's the Dummy Now?, if I had a dragonfly following me, I’d be thrilled! They eat other pesky insects like mosquitoes, and their hunting success rate is nearly 100%.
the fly..... TERRIFYING.... I won’t move further south bc of them (I grew up with is S FL). True be told, I won’t live anywhere where if I get stuck outside, I’ll die. Happy “northern” SC home. Just enough of each season.
And when you put your boots back on, with a palmetto bug inside, they'll bite the crap out of you, and it nearly always gets infected. I love living in Florida (nearly all my life), but I sure wouldn't miss those big bastards!
I don't mean to cause offense, Lawrence, but we've had stinkbugs along the northern Gulf Coast since long before I was born, and I'm now 61 years old. They may not be the same species or such that you're talking about (I'm definitely NOT an entymologist!), but they look like what you showed, and they're either brown or green and they STINK!!!! I remember my mama making us scrub our hands with lye soap & household ammonia, outside, after we'd touched any of them. They'd make us too stinky to be allowed indoors. Anyway, just thought I'd share that.
I was thinking the same thing I remember stink bugs as a child and not being allowed in the house if we messed with them. What is with southern mothers and lye soap?
Exactly. I remember my dad telling us not to kill them when we were little in the early 1970's. His mother was big on using lye soap but we never did except for curing certain medical conditions.
Yeah, I was born in 1970, and I distinctly remember stink bugs (aka, shield bugs) when I was a kid, but the ones he's talking about is an invasive subspecies that originated in China. (I live in Pennsylvania, which was ground zero.) They were EVERYWHERE for quite a few years. And when he said that they were primarily outside, he's full of it--trust me, they LOVE coming indoors during cooler weather. That said, I haven't seen too many this year.
I actually kinda like Cicada Killers. I appreciate that they have no interest in stinging people and very rarely ever do. They're just gliding around looking for a meal for their young most of the time. Digger wasps do the same, but aren't quite as big. You leave them alone and they'll leave you alone.
They are enormous! I used to park very near a place popular with cicada killers and i still got flustered whenever i saw them out and about despite them never having bothered me personally. probably leftover anxiety from the time i unknowingly disturbed a wasp nest behind house siding 20 feet up in the air on a ladder.
ever had a firefly come indoors and you're not aware. They light up somewhere in your dark bedroom and you swear you're losing your mind or left some appliance on. You grab your phone, check the TV, everything else. They turn on and off and you'll swear you're hallucinating despite have had just one drink.
oh and I hate it when one frickin mosquito buzzes your head at night in the dark. You jump up, turn on the light and of course the little shit is gone. Until you get back in bed and the light is out. Repeat, repeat, repeat. How did anyone ever get any sleep before window screens were invented?
Hi, I like your videos. About Cicadas, you talked about the 17-year ones. There are also annual Cicadas and then there is a 13 year variant. I worked in the Cook County Forest Preserve on a family business in 1973 when the 17, 13 and annual were all out simultaneously. It was eerie to say the least. A science fiction movie is the closet thing I can think of for the noise. Thank God those two bugs come out together every 221 years.
At congaree national Park in south Carolina, a couple times a year you can see a synchronized light show put on by fireflies. Thousands of them blink all together. It's pretty amazing.
Monarch butterflies are the most amazing insects I have ever encountered. Butterflies are insects, right? I remember them swarming in rural Missouri in my youth, tens of thousands of them...
Jane at Home Grow your own. Monarchs lay eggs on butterflyweed. The larva can strip all your plants of leaves overnight. The stems will eventually re-leaf. The seeds float around and will spread everywhere, even to your neighbors. Then the larva climb someplace “safe” and make a lime colored cocoon. Then the Monarch emerges. Ta-da - butterfly!
As a former entomologist -- I appreciate that you helped to educated a few about the difference between insects and spiders. Thanks Lawrence. My favorite insect --- might be the Swallow Tail Butterfly -- (there are several varieties of Swallow Tail) or The Monarch Butterfly. I also like Tiger Beetles - (they are predators).
OMG, I've got a bunch of them this year. Hate em! They frigging hurt when they bite and leave small, round pus pockets, that when they burst leave scars.
Lord! Do not get me started! If ever a creature was spawned of Satan, it's fire ants! We got a breed down here in Texas, they're real small, like thief ants or sugar ants; but they sting worse than the big ones! My poor puppy, Buster, got stung on the tail and hip, he's allergic, I did the best I could, it wasn't enough! I took him to the vet, it cost me $350, I hate those damned ants! Buster is still with me, and we're real careful when we go walking.
Yeah. They were gone for a while but now they're back. Kind of welcome really. They were pushed out by itty bitty crazy ants. Although crazy ants don't sting like fire ants, the damn things build nests everywhere and we don't have anything that kills them.
I got stung by a whole colony while guiding a group of people on a birding trip during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in South Texas. I was trying to set up the scope to get folks on a couple Burrowing Owls, and low and behold, I stepped right into one of their stinging mounds.
Tarantula Hawks are like ALIEN but real. Tarantulas are the crew of the Nostromo and the large black Tarantula Hawks and their freaky bright blood red wings are the disable you with a neurotoxin, egg implanting, drag you to your own burrow to become a living host, facehugger/xenomorph in one.
@@ThatBoomerDude56 Japanese giant hornets spit acid, though, and they regularly kill quite a few people all over Japan each year by stinging them to death. They're also the size of the palm of your hand, or thereabouts. And they *_swarm._*
I have a pet cricket. Took him to the vet who said he has "restless leg syndome". Now $35 a month later for a script, he makes no annoying sounds and I sleep much better.
Once you acclimate to the sounds of the night, crickets and bullfrogs, you will find a silent night to be disquieting. I never did become inured to the call of loons, wolves, or coyotes, however.
I was born in Florida, I'm now in northern Ohio, and I've lived in several places in between those two points over the course of my 48 years, and I have *never* seen or heard of anyone having a reaction like yours to mosquito bites. I very sincerely believe that you may be allergic. They're not supposed to make you swell like a bee sting, and they certainly don't make most people's eyes swell partially shut. O_o That looked horrendous.
We have them every year also but there is a variety that come out every so many years and then it's wild. The shells are everywhere. I think we are about due.
From Indiana here -- there are different "broods" of cicadas. Some are annual, the huge broods are 17 year, but there are also ones that have timing in between those 2. If my memory serves me, 3 year, 7 year, etc.
Yeah, it’s not “every 10-15 years”, it’s specifically 13 and 17 years, and since they’re prime numbers, different broods of a particular period won’t ever encounter another brood of the same period. (I.e. a 17 year cicada can never meet another brood of 17 year cicadas.) And of course the 13 and 17 year ones won’t meet up except on multiples of 221 years (13x17).
I used to live near Allentown PA, and there were so many stink bugs there! I never realized that Allentown was the hotspot, but considering it’s Allentown, that doesn’t surprise me.
Maybe this is because of COVID, but I can't imagine not showing crickets and cicadas and including a clip of what they sound like. That's what I was expecting.
@@cyn37211, you're entirely right, although I believe that's mostly in groups. A summary of a 1995 study that found that "sound pressure levels ranged from 79.8 to 106.2 decibels" was quoted here: www.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3mp/cicada-calls-are-literally-deafening. That dB level outdoors if you're on a street with LOTS of cicadas in the trees is, indeed, capable of causing permanent hearing damage--it's a similar range to a lawn mower. In season, the local news warns of sitting out in the din for more than 5-10 minutes without hearing protection.
I just moved to the South, and I have to agree with you. There are bugs I have never seen before, and then some that are similar to what we had but different.
Larry, I enjoy your wit and humor. I don't know how anyone could turn the subject of bugs into anything so funny. But, you have. Keep up the funny videos, great entertainment.
As children, on a summer evening near sunset, we would capture fireflies and put them in a glass jar with holes punched in the lid. We would then take them into a dark room and watch them light up. Yes, we would release them. Years later, even though we did not hurt them, I have still a twinge of guilt about it all...
SAME. (Though I was just saying to my wife the other day, I'm not sure if I had holes in the lid the first time when I was REALLY young. I hope I did. Eep)
I'm glad you didn't complain about cicadas' drone. I've always seen them as part of the soundtrack of life in the spring and summer, but some people hate them. I've always been fascinated by their amazing life cycle and their shimmering color.
You didn't talk about the Katydids that make such an incessant noise all summer. Now I live on the west coast where the insect experience is more like the one in the UK. But, I've been all over the US and Katydids are memorable LOL
@@andycockrum1212 Me too. I won't even watch the news anymore. All I see is Covid, protests, riots, Trump, Biden, Asian Hornets invading, etc. If he did, I'd stop watching! I actually enjoy watching his clips as they are!
I remember growing up in NJ, when the cicadas did finally emerge their corpses would litter the ground in such numbers as to form a carpet. You could walk anywhere outside and never actually touch the ground, since you'd be walking on top of cicada corpses the whole way. It was super gross.
I enjoy these 'American things I learned about after moving here'videos! I would also like to hear more of the reverse. (Things Americans would find in Britain). I know there are some of these, but more would be nice!
Yellow Jackets nearly killed my brother-He was cutting grass for the Veterans of foreign wars in a grave yard and ran over a nest Got stung over 80 times and his heart stopped 4 times in the hospital--His heart is now down to 25% efficiency...
I hate yellow jackets!! Stepped on a nest once while wearing flip flops. Got stung several times in the foot and a few other places. Not as bad as your brother but got light headed and vomited and couldn't walk for a while. Foot and leg blew up like a balloon. Hurt like he'll!
LOL looking at your eye made me laugh out loud. But then again, the same thing happened to me and my eye swelled shut during a camping trip. I remember my then teenage daughter breaking out in laughter at my eye at a resteraunt on our way home.....
When I lived in the hills south of Pittsburgh, we used to watch the fireworks on a grassy hillside in our neighborhood. Whenever a rocket would go off the fireflies would rise up out the grass and glow, as if to try and compete with the giant firefly in the sky.
I had just moved to Arizona, I was sitting in a lawn chair and looked down, a Tarantula ran across the ground. My first thought was Oh no someone lost their pet. Then the light bulb went off. Arizona land of the Big Bugs.
Years ago when I drove otr I stopped off at a rest area somewhere in AZ. Everything was fine till I looked up on the wall of the stall I was in, just a big ole tarantula chilling there. I've had em as pets do didn't bother me but just found it kinda funny.
I’m from Ohio, now living in Texas. This place is totally different than anything you have experienced so far. Uninvited Lizards in the house on a regular basis, a barbecue is not a cookout, pee-can debate continues and don’t get me started on the overpasses, near Dallas they are stacked 4 or 5 high. Just crazy!!!
My aunt once lit up a fire ant mound, only to inadvertently stand in their escape route. Those SOBs waited until those in the lead got up to her shoulders, then they all started biting at once. Never seen anything like it. It was like they consciously chose to maximize their revenge. (FWIW, if you put Bert's Bees Res-Q ointment on the bites fast enough, they won't form a welt. I never go anywhere without the stuff.)
Don’t leave out Alabama!!!! 3 ft tall red anthills!!! Thankfully I moved back to NC and we just have tiny red ant hills that seem a little less aggressive lol 😂
Just wait until you encounter deerflies or horseflies. Deerflies look like regular flies...but slightly larger and only black/grey...and they bite. Hard. Horseflies....are HUGE and really ugly, and also bite...very hard. I suggest using permethrin when out of doors where you're likely to encounter either of them. Oh...and do you have June Bugs? Those humongous brown beetles that show up at night in June? Harmless, but....yeah.
Oh God June bugs... They run into everything and you can hear the impact of their hard bodies. And you have to be careful not to let them get caught in your hair or clothes with their sticky claws. They're the second dumbest insect on the planet. The dumbest being crane flies, or "gallanippers" (gallon-nippers) as my parents called them. They look just like enormous mosquitos with a three inch wingspan and long useless legs. They can barely fly, and they can't go anywhere or do anything but bump into walls when they do.
Lightening bugs are magical. When you drive to the country, you can see fields with thousands of them flying around. You see them in the city, but not as much as in the country. I live In Virginia. I'm about an hour away from the country. I don't get down there often, but I love to go when it's time for the lightening bugs to appear.
Thanks for explaining the mosquitos in England. I have been binge watching episodes of Midsomer Murders and really wondered why so many people seemed to live close to stagnant ponds where in the US you would get eaten alive and it never seemed to bother them at all.
Fireflies are found in temperate and tropical regions on every continent except Antarctica. They live throughout the United States in parks, meadows, gardens, and woodland edges. They are most commonly seen on summer evenings.
Awesome video! I've been an insect enthusiast since I was 5 and still love to observe and identify different ones that I encounter. My favorite is probably the praying mantis, although I do love dragonflies and stag beetles too.
True story: I once saw a praying mantis fight off a bird that was trying to make a meal out of the mantis. It stood up as tall as it was capable of doing and waved its forelegs in the air. The bird tried a couple times to catch the praying mantis; it kept bluffing and finally the bird gave up and let the mantis alone. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it.
Bugs in the UK are obviously more polite, you don't even need screens! I was watching this while listening to crickets, catching the occasional firefly out of the corner of my eye and worrying about mosquitoes, because I hadn't put on bug spray (back deck of my house). I don't mind crickets because I'm used to them, but when cicadas come out it's very annoying! Stink bugs have become a more recent problem here in Ohio. I just take a sturdy piece of mail that isn't important, scoop them up and send them outside.
I've always fantasized about living somewhere you don't need screens on the windows! Wonder what that would be like? I'm a southerner so the bugs are endless.
@@agoogleuser4443 Yeah, I remember being on a forum once that had a chat between some people moving to the US from the UK and one was moving to Florida and said he wouldn't put screens in his windows and all the Americans were like: "Ooh, buddy! You REALLY might wanna rethink that!" (I'm a Southerner too, so just opening my door for less than a minute lets in a TON of bugs, so I can't imagine not having screen windows)
Your info on stink bugs only relates to a single species - the brown marmorated. I know that we had stink bugs in south Louisiana in the 1960s, maybe not that species.
@@EmeryJude ...glad we don't have those up north. The ugly imports he showed are bad enough. And he also didn't mention they get in houses to escape the winter. And the minute you turn on heat and a light, they ALL show up. Ick.
I don't know if the "stink" is only a defense but, it may be a call to arms like with the Asian Beetle. When squashing a beetle it will emit.. pheromones? that signal they are being attacked and MORE beetles will come! They say to pick them up with a tissue and never squash it and then flush it. If there are a load of them, use a vacuum cleaner to collect them and pitch the bag immediately. I don't know if any of these tips would apply to stink bugs, should there be an infested area. But, I've never heard of a house being infested with stink bugs like with the beetles, either.
Holy shit your not kidding. The Cicada Killer Wasp is no joke. I live in Connecticut and They burrow in my front lawn every year and every time you walk by they fuck with you.. my dad used to pour gasoline down the holes lol
I love Cicada Killers! I like to think of them as my little buddies. They are very docile... we can mow right over their nest holes and those BA ladies just go about their business... no f*cks given.
I live in Kansas and had never seen a cicada killer until about 3 years ago. OMG, I ran inside the house so fast and didn't leave it for the rest of the day. I have a horrible phobia of regular wasps, that thing was literally my worst nightmare.
The day before Hurricane Irene got here was a beautiful sunny summer day, and when I left to go to work I realized that all the nighttime noises were being made during the day. Crickets, cicadas and even tree frogs were singing loudly. I guess they could sense the coming storm. The weird thing was that not a single person besides me seemed to notice the noise.
The best part about mosquitoes is the lovely fact that the males, when they're not busy trying to fornicate with the females, actually EAT THE FEMALES!! Give mankind more "Skeeter-Eaters," please.
The state of Florida recently released 750 million genetically modified male mosquitos in the hopes of controlling the population. They are sterile, so even if they mate with females, that's 750 million less mosquitos next year... in theory. I wish them luck with it, but all I can do is think dire thoughts about a certain movie about genetically modified dinosaurs. I mean, what could go wrong....?
John S, UF is the institution that released the infamous Love bugs. I don’t know what they were supposed to accomplish, but they sure made a mess. It’s Not Nice to Fool With Mother Nature.
Actually, some cultures _do_ eat stink bugs. Apparently the chemical that gives them their distinct odor is also present in cilantro, so they're blended up and used to flavor sauces. Thank goodness I hate cilantro. Also, it's important to note that the "stink" of stink bugs isn't a putrid/rancid/fetid/fecal "stink" so much as a waxy, permeating chemical smell. The worst part isn't the smell itself, but the fact that it sticks to your skin/clothes if you handle the bugs and takes a long time to wash off. I've found the best way to get rid of a stink bug in the house without triggering its odor glands is to gently wrap it in a tissue without applying pressure to the bug, then flush it down the toilet. Whatever you do, don't crush it. That'll release the maximum stink all over your hands.
In michigan specifically by lake saint clair in the summer from late June to July we get fishflies. They can only be found near certain lakes where they nest and hatch. They only live for a few days. And they pop like popcorn when they get run over by cars. There's millions of them each year. They can also be called mayflies and some other names.
The Mayflies are all over, they're particularly horrific if you're on a sailboat. There is a race between Toledo and Put-in-Bay across Lake Erie during peak Mayfly season. The boats leave white and come in black as they are covered in Mayflies AAAAGGH!
When you said you feet were britten by mosquitoes it's more likely it was chiggers. Chiggers really itch and I would rather be bitten by a mosquito any day.
You got that right! Chigger bites are horrible! I sat down briefly on a fallen tree trunk in a hiking area, just long enough to swing my legs over it to keep walking; after I got home, I discovered I had Dozens of chigger (or red bug) bites on the backs of my legs...through the material of my jeans! Those things were misery for me for a couple weeks! AAAH!
In Minnesota the only insect that left a big impression on me aside from mosquitoes were boxelder bugs. I've never encountered them anywhere else and we had a plague like infestation in our basement one year.
Still water is the worst. Even a puddle or a bucket that has water is a breeding ground. Mosquitoes need an absolutely flat water surface to lay their larvae.. it takes 24 hours for them to grow and take flight. Emptying out standing water is a must but, jossling a bird bath or such and even skipping a stone across flat water, will kill the larvae by causing ripples on the water.
When I was a kid, my family went to Florida for a vacation. There was a super-gigantor cockroach crawling around our motel room, which we spotted as soon as we opened the door for the first time. We went to the office, and the dude was like, "Nah, that's just a Palmetto Bug", and didn't offer to do anything about it. So my Dad took off his boot, went back in and smashed the 'Palmetto Bug' to paste. In doing so, he destroyed the lamp and lampshade upon which it was crawling. I don't believe they remunerated the motel for the tragic loss of their lamp.
@@julieb3996 How come you guys aren't screaming this from the rooftops? That, right there, is how we get people to care about climate change. "Want those nuclear proof fuckers to grow wings? No? Well, do something!"
Actual Stink Bugs which are large and Black and don't fly smell much much worse, one of them got into a Sears and sprayed it's stink and the whole place was cleared out.
We had green stink bugs in Georgia when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's. They looked just like the brown one except green and they smelled horrible. Especially if you squashed one.
Cicadas around here in Texas sound like Bruce Banner just turned into the Incredible Hulk. We have had them on the side of our house sounding like a very loud car alarm. It was awful, it was easily one of the loudest sounds I’ve heard. Also Katydids, Locust in the Southwest. In places like Albuquerque they show up on weather radar. I don’t know what type of wasps you had in the UK, however there are many types here. I grew up where they rice flies. There are so many different insects around the country that a murder was once solved by proving the suspect drove across country to kill someone and drove back to the east coast. They used an entomologist to determine which bugs were in the car’s grill thus proving that he had drove to California.
Until deep sea scientists recently made new discoveries, the Insecta Kingdom was the One Kingdom that Scientists thought had NOT been fully Classified. ("Classy" is a slang term from Classified. Classified means "grouped" which makes it Impossible for a person to HAVE Class. They can only be OF a Class) Anyway, insects are constantly crossbreeding, mutating and adapting so, the Kingdom ever grows. One of the Highest Paid Jobs in "Insectology" is when they pay people to explore obscure habitats all over the World, setting up nets, fogging the habitat to desensitize insects as they fall into the nets and they work to identify, discover and categorize the insects as fast as they can so they can get the hell out before they wake! The concern is not just the deadly insects they know about but, the ones they DON'T! Big Money! This Classifying must be done! Many of our Medicines come from Animals, Plants and Insects. Which is why we are further destroying ourselves with climate change because of the loss of the rare species of insects (with their habitats) that could save lives! We need insects. We could not survive without most of them but, mosquitoes??? Killer Hornets? They can Go!
The Mermaid's Tale We drove through on I-10 in 2006 around Lordsburg where millions of giant grasshoppers covered the road to the point the road was slick and hard to drive on We stopped at a rest area and opening the door you almost couldn’t do so without putting your hand on them They were so large our dog could see them from about 20’ away
Ever seen a palmetto bug? We are awash with them in the south. They make a delightful POP when you step on them in the dark on the way to the restroom. They also have a light feathery touch as a discovered upon waking the find one digging for lunch in my mustache.
Other insects you won't find in Britain include: Jerusalem crickets - These are not true crickets, and they don't make the typical cricket sounds. They can deliver a nasty bite. They're also *ugly*. Monarch butterflies Bay checkerspot butterflies
Jerusalem crickets are known locally as Potato Bugs. They are enormous. I've never knew they had a bite. They aren't so common that I've ever known anyone to mess with one -- you grab it and throw it out the door -- unless the wife has beaten it to death with a broom.
I live in PA and unfortunately there are way, way more stink bugs in my house than I ever see outside. They come in my 1880s built house for the winter. When we moved in circa 2000 it was hundreds of ladybugs. So sorry it changed.
I met a scotsman who wondered why in American movies everyone clean off their windscreens. Then he came to Dallas, Tx and said, "You have huge bugs and they are filled with porridge".
I’m from the Allentown, PA area and my first job out of college I worked at the Penn State cooperative extension office with the entomologist that discovered the stink bug here in the U.S.
I grew up in Chicago suburbs. When I saw the title, I thought "Oh yeah, Lightning Bugs and Cicadas are totally on this list". The Mosquito one surprised me. I thought the Brits would have more experience with them. If you think the normal Midwest Mosquitoes are bad, you should go visit Minnesota. The mosquito is Minnesota's unofficial state bird and those little devils literally can bite through jeans (what a horrifying surprise). They were the most aggressive mosquitoes I have ever experienced. When we camped up there, all normal bug spray failed. Those bugs bathe in the Walmart brands of bug spray and they dine on the "organic bug sprays". By trial and error, we discovered the only thing that worked with those little blood sucking terrorists was spraying permethrin (actual insecticide) on our clothes and tents and spraying 100% Deet spray on ourselves. Yeah, no one likes the mosquitoes.....
I remember ½ - ¾" Northern mosquitoes, their bite can raise a 2 toned 1" welt & itch fiercely for a week. Calamine lotion or other topical relief is neccessary. The Florida mosquito, is like a soft, fluffy puppy. It's about ¼ - ⅜ inch big, a miniature. When it bites your skin might turn red at the site, and be annoying for 24 hrs. Sometimes you can locate the bite 3 days later because it's a little red dot, where it once itched.
Have you tried basil ? They hate it and mint both just crush a few leaves and rub it on your skin .We can go in the worst areas and they avoid us same with gnats and biting flies they don't like it either .We do a lot of night fishing and I get devoured by every bug out there ,they don't go near her she just takes a small pot and breaks off a few leaves and she fishes in peace plus it doesn't smell that bad .I didn't believe her until I tried it myself something she learned as a landscaper working in mosquito prone areas .Don't use lavender or any floral scents it attracts yellow jackets and bees Skin so soft by Avon is good also been used down here in the deep south forever to keep the biters away .Mosquitoes can be really bad down here also .I am not sure if would work up there but it does down here to avoid yellow jackets just pour out a soda on the ground far away ,stale beer works great also to attract them away from you something about the yeasty smell attracts all manner of biting bugs .The soda works really good with the pollinators .It is how she keeps them away from her honeybees in her gardens just buys a cheap 3 litre and pours it out well away from her when working in her gardens or hives .They love soda the sweeter the better works with fire ants and keeping them all away from her hummingbird and butterfly feeders but the honeybees prefer the flowers instead of the sweet soda .It is worth a try next time you go camping oh dryer sheets work good also
@@kennethmcdonald2987 I'll try to remember Basil. Skeeters adore me, the sentiment is un reciprocated. I had an old friend of mine who lived in the county with an outdoor hot tub. It was surrounded by mint that had gone wild. Peppermint, spearmint & lemon mint, growing like weeds out of control all around that property, never a mosquito in sight.
Update: apparently the brown marmorated stink bug has been observed in Britain since 2014, emerging six years after I left. Do with that information what you will.
There are black beetle stink bugs too, that look like wood beetles....found out the hard way it was not a wood beetle....my greatroom smelled like rancid butter or grease.
I just realized you look like you could be Half-Awake Chris's father. Although you were pretty young when he was born.
I live in Philadelphia which is 1 hour south of Allentown. The stink bugs are the worst. I havent seen as many recently though. We have a new invasive species called the spotted lanternfly.
I live near Allentown. What a way to get noticed! The stink bugs are totally disgusting. They seem prehistoric! Wait until you see the equally gross and invasive spotted lantern fly.
We have had green stink bugs (shield bugs) on our runner beans for as long as I can remember. There is a native green one in the UK which is harmless and doesn't need much control. Then there is the Southern green one native to mainland Europe which was introduced in 2003 which will destroy your runner beans and everything else. Of all of the stink bugs there are over 30 species in the UK according to the RHS and RSPB. I had to look this up a few weeks ago to save our harvest and think we had our first invasion from the South. I've seen the brown ones but to me, where I am, they are rare so I am unsure when I saw them.
Also seen a firefly in our garden last year. I had no idea what it was. I didn't want to use the garden hose and soak everything as I knew I'd miss the flying target - well lose sight of it while I attach the hose and turn the tap on, so I opted to run inside screaming waving my arms around like there was swarm with the intention of returning to safety to try to find out what nuclear creature is invading us. After some research I came across the Natural History Museum website which told me it was the "Lampyris noctiluca" glow worm which was most commonly found in Britain. Never seen one before or since and when I was younger I lived right on a woodland path and thought I had seen all bugs... I was wrong, soooo wrong!
"Mosquitos are wankers" :-) Never a truer word spoken.
I don't know what happened to his face but that was a hellova mosquito!! He must be allergic or he was stung by a bee or something else! That's not right!!
Our "B" league baseball team is called the "Skeeters"..as in mosquitoes. Oh, the shame of it all
@@AnnieWarbux Imagine your body reacting to a new chemical that has never been introduced to it before. In multiple small locations. He's also probably allergic to an extent. I have a horrible time with fleas from dogs. They absolutely love my blood and get decent sized welts from bites.
too true. But wait until you encounter a tick embedded in your skin. Wanker grown fat on your blood. The worst.
Wasps are wankers too.
When you said, “bitten by a fly” all I could think about were horseflies. Holy mother of pearl those bites hurt.
If they had venom, they'd be way worse than wasps. You can actually feel them chomp.
Yes they do
Agree about the horse flies. They can get a little too "friendly" so I try to move about my business quickly.
Oh horseflies are one of the worst.
I've only been bitten by a horse fly once. I think it's worse than a wasp or hornet sting. Fuckin hurts like a motherfucker
Once we drove on a road through a swamp on a June night, and the air was filled with fireflies. When we got to the top of the hill, we looked back to see acres & acres of marshland glowing with an ethereal light. It was magical and ephemeral, and I will never forget it.
Ooh, sounds beautiful! Where you in the South, by chance? Louisiana or Alabama maybe? I have read in older fiction that fireflies would move about in swarms in the South about a century ago and that it was a beautiful seasonal event. I'm happy when I can count 10 in one evening.
@@karenwilliams4152 I'm in Ontario, Canada, and the swamp was in Grey County. I should have said, there was a mist over the marsh, which is why it was so unusual looking.
We have huge amounts of them after shooting off fireworks. Drawn to the phosphorous?
Favorite? Dragonflies. Why? They eat mosquitoes. Enough said.
Tiffany stained glass lamps with a dragonfly pattern. I rest my case.
@@themoviedealers Only if your case is based upon $.
Crane flies: they look like giant mosquitoes. They are sometimes called mosquito eaters but they don’t actually eat mosquitoes 😕
@Da'Rellus Jarvis Marquavius Same but i hate spiders so when I see one it's really hard not to kill it. I have my husband relocate them :)
This should be a top comment.
Fireflies are beautiful, I wish everyone could have fireflies in their lives.
But not spotted later flies that also emit light.
I love fireflies- lots of good memories of summers chasing them at night.
That brings back memories of summers as a kid. We’d catch a few and let them go in our bedroom to watch while we drifted off.
Yes!!!🙌🙌🙌
When I was a kid never knew that done people never had them
Perhaps because I grew up with them and they bring back memories of my childhood, but I love the sounds of crickets and cicadas.
Yep! And katydids. The sounds of summer. LOVE it!
Fireflies are almost everyone's favorite insect in America.
Gretchen my area doesn't have fireflies! I met them in North Carolina where they're called lightening bugs! Scared me! Thought they were a flashlight shining through a screen door! I took one home but guess they die in climates similar to the UK!
@@oldfogey3272 They don't live in the American Mountain West where I grew up, either. I first saw them in Iowa.
old fogey actually, they just don’t live very long.
old fogey I saw one in new york
During the southern summer nights, my sisters and I would be outside catching as many fireflies as possible. We would put them into clear glass jars that had holes in the lids. It was fun to see those jars all aglow, shining into the dark.
I always thought "don't let the bed bugs bite" was just an expression until I had to have my house fumigated for bed bugs.
Right! In 2009 we had an infestation in the area where I live. To combat them they heated our houses to 105 degrees and then fumigated. We had to find a hotel of course, and wash literally EVERYTHING in bleach (twice)
Bed bugs was something mythical for almost a century in the US until the massive illegal immigration of the last 2 decades, now everyone I know has had a bed bug infestation.
@@Vicus_of_Utrecht "Bed bugs can be found all over the world, but perhaps surprisingly, the worst infestation problems tend to occur in developed countries where people use bed frames and soft bedding. Between 1930 and 1980, they were almost eliminated because chemicals like DDT were used to tackle infestations, but since DDT was banned, there’s been a huge increase."
@@engletinaknickerbocker5380 In the U.S., the problem is SOLELY the illegal immigration vector. It was unheard of barely 20 years ago, decades after DDT usage ended.
As you apparently just InvestiGoogled and copy/paste from an unamed link, you don't seem well versed in this topic and I advise you to prethink before responding to me.
@@Vicus_of_Utrecht I think you're incorrect for the most part. I like to quote actual statements that make sense. If you disagree you can find something else on the internet without having to come up with your own, in your case, an 'unenlightened' opinion.
You saying that bedbugs come solely from illegal immigrants is incorrect. I doubt you've ever even studied the issue. Even the CDC says, "Everyone is at risk for getting bed bugs when visiting an infected area. However, anyone who travels frequently and shares living and sleeping quarters where other people have previously slept has a higher risk of being bitten and or spreading a bed bug infestation." If you don't want there to be any bedbugs in your bed, don't travel anywhere, and demand that all your sleeping companions do the same if you can.
I work in a hospital and if a patient comes to the hospital with the little critters there is a specific protocol for ridding the pests from clothing and bedding before going anywhere else in the facility. A long time ago, DDT was sprayed near humans like human disinfectant fog. Now, it isn't.
Soo.. does anyone want to tell him about black flies, chiggers, and the cicada killer wasp?
what about the state bird of wisconsin and Minnesota? the lake fly? they can be so thick that it looks like a black cloud at round level.
@Xxx Xxx fuck that we dont have the top 3 in ohio hell no those things, gotta throw the whole state away
My god the cicada killers. I have 3 living under the deck. The mother of all wasp. They are terifying
@@Che_Yo yo what are cicada killers apparently we have em here but i have never once seen one
@@Che_Yo OMG I LOOKED IT UP WTF
One of my cats hunted down a stink bug once. He was so proud of himself as he was eating his kill. Almost immediately he started shaking his head and backing up. Instant regret. He never went after them again. 😸
my dog, too.
Poor cat.
foamed at the mouth?
@@JoeZyzyx oops
I tried moving one off of my desk when I was about six. Damn little thing kept me from doing my homework on said desk that day. Had to move to the dinning room table.
I love cicadas! Their song is the soundtrack to my childhood, actually lifelong summer nights.
A friend moved here from Cali, she and her husband had no idea about them. They'd see the shells on the side of their house, step on them & realize they're empty. She called one day, explained it to me and said wtf are these prehistoric mud bugs!?😂
One of the seasons we have in Florida is love bug season. They're harmless but do a number on your car's paint job.
We get those in Texas too, down toward the coast. In really bad years, you have to pull off the highway every mile or so to attempt to wipe them off your windshield. For God's sake, you don't want to use your wipers or you'll never get the bug juice off.
@@letshavepie and in Louisiana. All the way to the northern border.
Don’t keep the window open when driving btw, they hit like a bullet 🤣
Same happens in georgia
Our “love bugs” come from Florida. Thanks Florida.
Fireflies are "a bio-luminescent version of Tinder." That deserves applause!
For those you "should" encounter, I highly recommend the Praying Mantis. It is a truly extraordinary bug, that I highly doubt can be found in the UK. They look dangerous, with their little "scythe hands," but that's strictly for catching food (other bugs), not harming people. And the best part about them is, when you look at them, they turn their heads and look at YOU! I really do think these insects are INTELLIGENT! They just can't talk to us in words, to let us know.
Warning: Some of them also get quite huge...
And "stick bugs" in florida are often mistaken at times for them, although they have no "praying" look to them.
*shiver*
@@kns6958 Had one land on my shoulder once, and at no point did I feel like it was dangerous. I remember it looking right at me, from inches away, and the two of us just "stared" at each other, for a few seconds. But when I reached up to touch it with my finger, instead of attacking me, it flew off.
Largest mantis I'd ever encountered was a FOOT LONG! It wasn't very adept at flying (obviously), but the damn thing slapped me in the face before it landed. I was about to fight until I noticed it was HUGE
@@Ashura_Typhoon That's huge! The one that landed on my shoulder was only about half that size, at most.
If you think mosquitoes are wankers, let me introduce you to the FIRE ANT. Those are little demonic beasts that are straight from the pit of hell. 🔥🐜 😱
Bifen!!!!!
True that!
I set up my sleeping bag in the dark several years ago. I woke up to fire ant bites in the dark.
they are gradually extending their territory to the North, they are coming for you.
Agree
My favorite bug I've ever encountered is called a clearwing hummingbird moth and it's absolutely adorable.
Are those the ones that look like a cross between a moth and a bumblebee?
@@agoogleuser4443 Some of them do. The one I saw was colored green and red.
@Piruru Lucky you! They're gorgeous! :-)
OMG, OMG, OMG, brown marmorated stinkbugs, OMG. I live in a third floor condo in a 100+ year old building in Chicago. Three years back, I was sorting through some clothes in my closet and found one of these previously unknown to me critters just nestled there, doing nothing. Not moving, not stinking. Just existing. After the obligatory race around the apartment shrieking like a banshee I returned to the closet...there it sat, impervious. Since it didn't look like it was going anywhere, I fired up the internet and did some quick research...yikes.
The (only) good news was that in the fall (it was), they looked for somewhere cozy to overwinter and went dormant. They didn't move around, they didn't look for food, they just went into a stupor for the duration - you could shriek in their brown marmorated ears (do they have ears?) 'til kingdom come, they were busy elsewhere. So, having at this point read about the stink, I carefully scooped him up and carried him outside and dumped him. Went back, tossed the shirt in the laundry basket and continued sorting...found two more. Eeek does not adequately express my emotional state.
Fast forward to spring. No further sightings...until one night as I sat surfing the net at my kitchen counter, I heard an erratic buzzing sound rumbling toward me, and then, thud. A brown marmorated stinkbug had flown across the room like a woozy, overloaded cargo plane and smacked into the wall behind me. WTF!? I scooped him up - he was moving, but very slowly. Don't know if it was concussion or just the recent return to this plane of consciousness. Out he went. Over the next week or so, a few more showed up and got the same heave-ho. Then nothing.
Until fall. And then, all hell broke loose. They started an all-out assault, seeking any possible opening to come in from the approaching winter. I caulked all the windows shut, but still I was finding some. And then...I saw it. A brown marmorated stinkbug, sticking his brown marmorated head out from...one of the vents of my window air conditioner. The damn things were coming in through the outside vents and wending their way through the machine to pop out in the winter haven of my bedroom!
Steps were taken. Fast forward to 2020, the year of Covid-19, national civil unrest, and the presidential election. It's September. They're coming. Pray for me.
AbsentWithoutLeaving Were you able to stop them from coming in through your air conditioner? I’m thankful it wasn’t me.because my nerves have been shot and I think a heart attack would be my fate.
Did you make it?
One thing you can do if you want a more lethal solution. Buy a small ozone generator. Turn it on, close the bedroom door, sealing the bottom, And go out with a good book for coffee and a slice of pie for 8 hours or so. When you get back, turn off the ozone generator, open a window to air the place out, and hit the fitness center for an hour - you don't want to breathe in too much ozone yourself. Anything in that bedroom that requires oxygen will have expired from ozone poisoning, including cockroaches, bedbugs, mold, and mildew. Give everything a good vacuum, and you're golden.
As someone who has been around many, many stinkbugs ever since I was a kid, "a woozy, overloaded cargo plane" is a hilarious and accurate description of how they fly. Thank you for writing this comment.
Laurence, re. your horrendous encounter with mosquitoes: what came instantly to mind was that fairytale giant at the top of his beanstalk who exclaimed, Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
“Mosquitos are wankers!” You my friend are spot on!
Deep in the American South they grow the mosquitoes large enough to kill cattle. I hear swarms of mosquitoes with thousands upon thousands swarming large enough to see them like clouds bother the wildlife north of the Canadian border in the summer. Here in central North Carolina we get both kinds - the Egyptian and Asian Tiger mosquitoes. You can't stop them by getting rid of all the standing water in your yard, they just don't grow as big, and come from your neighbor's yard to you.
As someone that lives in the pacific northwest, we don't have fireflies either. I'm sad that I've never seen them in person.
Strangely enough I didnt encounter them in florida either, but South Carolina has them... This country is too damn big
We have them in Kentucky but there seems to be fewer every year
We had them in central TX. They were everywhere on summer evenings. They seem to be going away, though. Don't live in TX anymore, but haven't seen one since childhood.
Illinois is loaded with them
They are like magic, but growing more rare because of insecticides.
As a Brit living here, I was shocked at those long legged centipedes in my house. They run way too fast, and when you finally squash one, the legs keep twitching 😱
House Centipedes are actually quite beneficial. They consume less desirable insects such as silverfish and cockroaches. If you can, let these "wall raptors" be.
Those house centipedes are actually from Europe. Fortunately for the Americas, they seem to prefer human dwellings and haven’t become destructive invasive species, just creepy as Hell. I don’t have them in my apartment because my cat eats them.
they eat other insects. the only time they bother you is if one gets in your shoe or is other wise cornered and then they bite.
@@spindalis79 Beneficial, but you also may want to look for damp spots in your house like a leaking basement, wet crawlspace, or leaky window flashing. They need a certain amount of humidity to live...
I hope this translates into British pronunciation...
"EEWWWWW!!!!" 😝😝😱😨😝😝
As a kid my friends and I use to get cicadas tie a string around them and keep as pets. They would fly around for awhile then we would let them go. Also their shells were great for scaring the crap out of others. We would pick them off the trees and place on an unwitting person 's shoulder. Once they saw it the show would begin: screaming, jumping around trying to get shell off. Ahhh....good times
We did that with June bugs....tied a string to their little leg and flew them like a kite!
@@marybethduke3263 Same with me and my sister, only we did it with carpenter bees.
My bro & I collected the cicada skins off the trees and made armies of them, the Spectral Insectoid Army. They'd fight the Green Plastic Army Dude Army, and the formidable Clay Men Army (which can regenerate!).
Happy childhood memories!
My cousin urn to chase me with the shells. I was a wimp and totally creeped out.
Cicadas are probably the noisiest insects I have ever encountered. There are a lot of them in the Carolinas and, of course, they are particularly abundant and noticeable in the rural areas.
I had to chuckle when you mentioned stink bugs! My late brother had a surprise run-in with one of them some years back, and I shared the tale at his funeral back in March of this year. He was a former Marine, and loved beef jerky. SO much so that he generally always had a bag of it open and with him. This was especially true if he was gaming (or any other activity on one of his several computers). One afternoon he was munching away on a bag of his favorite flavor of dried meat while doing some computering. As he was engaging in the repetitive action of hand-in-bag, grab-meat, put-meat-in-face, chomp-down-on-meat, he felt what he described as something popping inside his mouth. His immediate reaction was to think "oh, cool, a fat-pocket in my dried cow chunks!". This was VERY quickly replaced by a sudden and intense urge to eject the afore-mentioned meat from his mouth as he realized he'd just chomped down on a stinkbug. Apparently one of them decided it liked beef jerky, too, and invited itself into the bag of meat-nuggets when no-one was lookin'. My brother's descriptive comment to me about the experiences during the few seconds immediately following the "pop" were that stinkbugs taste exactly like they smell. Needless to say, this tale had equal reactions of disgust and humor from the assorted funeral-goers! I will forever associate stinkbugs with his memory. I think he'd have wanted it that way....
I absolutely love dragonflies; or as I like to call them, "helicopter faeries."
I have some around my house that straight up look like a HIND chopper with their high wing setting.
When I mow my lawn, I often get an escort of dragonflies snapping up gnats that come up after the mower passes over. It's not unusual to have 5 or 6 of them hovering around at once.
Antique Macabre Dragonflies swarm in Florida in the month of August. Perhaps l👀king for love.
I love dragonflies. They kill mosquitos and also kind if remind me of the Fairchild Republic A-10.
So Who's the Dummy Now?, if I had a dragonfly following me, I’d be thrilled! They eat other pesky insects like mosquitoes, and their hunting success rate is nearly 100%.
Palmetto Bug, deep southeastern US. Imagine a roach that is big enough to have its own luggage...monogrammed.
You forgot the worst part-they fly! Hideous. I could never live where they are. The creep factor is off the charts.
the fly..... TERRIFYING.... I won’t move further south bc of them (I grew up with is S FL).
True be told, I won’t live anywhere where if I get stuck outside, I’ll die. Happy “northern” SC home. Just enough of each season.
Came to the comments just to see if someone mentioned these. Horrible horrible bugs!
And when you put your boots back on, with a palmetto bug inside, they'll bite the crap out of you, and it nearly always gets infected. I love living in Florida (nearly all my life), but I sure wouldn't miss those big bastards!
Flying cockroaches! I hated those bastards
I don't mean to cause offense, Lawrence, but we've had stinkbugs along the northern Gulf Coast since long before I was born, and I'm now 61 years old.
They may not be the same species or such that you're talking about (I'm definitely NOT an entymologist!), but they look like what you showed, and they're either brown or green and they STINK!!!!
I remember my mama making us scrub our hands with lye soap & household ammonia, outside, after we'd touched any of them. They'd make us too stinky to be allowed indoors.
Anyway, just thought I'd share that.
I was thinking the same thing I remember stink bugs as a child and not being allowed in the house if we messed with them. What is with southern mothers and lye soap?
Exactly. I remember my dad telling us not to kill them when we were little in the early 1970's. His mother was big on using lye soap but we never did except for curing certain medical conditions.
While the Brown Marmorated stink bug may be new to the Northeast, there are a number of other stink bugs that are native to North America.
Yeah, I was born in 1970, and I distinctly remember stink bugs (aka, shield bugs) when I was a kid, but the ones he's talking about is an invasive subspecies that originated in China. (I live in Pennsylvania, which was ground zero.) They were EVERYWHERE for quite a few years. And when he said that they were primarily outside, he's full of it--trust me, they LOVE coming indoors during cooler weather. That said, I haven't seen too many this year.
Don’t forget the Cicada Killer. It’s a really big wasp that looks nasty but only kills Cicadas.
And that is because some species of cicadas are huge. Saw one in Pennsylvania a few years back...about 6 inches long.
I actually kinda like Cicada Killers. I appreciate that they have no interest in stinging people and very rarely ever do. They're just gliding around looking for a meal for their young most of the time.
Digger wasps do the same, but aren't quite as big. You leave them alone and they'll leave you alone.
They are enormous! I used to park very near a place popular with cicada killers and i still got flustered whenever i saw them out and about despite them never having bothered me personally. probably leftover anxiety from the time i unknowingly disturbed a wasp nest behind house siding 20 feet up in the air on a ladder.
@@oldgranite6467 I always cheer them on! I get way too many cicadas in NC!
Or Tarantula Wasps. They hunts tarantulas & leave ppl alone.
ever had a firefly come indoors and you're not aware. They light up somewhere in your dark bedroom and you swear you're losing your mind or left some appliance on. You grab your phone, check the TV, everything else. They turn on and off and you'll swear you're hallucinating despite have had just one drink.
One was in my sheets one time. It flickered a bunch under there, and then stopped. I never found it.
Especially if you're high.
That happened to me once, i saw one in my house, I caught it and took it outside.
oh and I hate it when one frickin mosquito buzzes your head at night in the dark. You jump up, turn on the light and of course the little shit is gone. Until you get back in bed and the light is out. Repeat, repeat, repeat. How did anyone ever get any sleep before window screens were invented?
@@sarahdee374 they used to have mosquito nets back in the day
Hi, I like your videos. About Cicadas, you talked about the 17-year ones. There are also annual Cicadas and then there is a 13 year variant. I worked in the Cook County Forest Preserve on a family business in 1973 when the 17, 13 and annual were all out simultaneously. It was eerie to say the least. A science fiction movie is the closet thing I can think of for the noise. Thank God those two bugs come out together every 221 years.
At congaree national Park in south Carolina, a couple times a year you can see a synchronized light show put on by fireflies. Thousands of them blink all together. It's pretty amazing.
Monarch butterflies are the most amazing insects I have ever encountered. Butterflies are insects, right? I remember them swarming in rural Missouri in my youth, tens of thousands of them...
I saw them when they were migrating on Kelly's Island, Ohio. They really were amazing.
The world is a sorrier place, now that we're losing them.
@@janeathome6643 Diminished and degraded. Perhaps, someday, after the glyphosate contamination has cleared...
Jane at Home Grow your own. Monarchs lay eggs on butterflyweed. The larva can strip all your plants of leaves overnight. The stems will eventually re-leaf. The seeds float around and will spread everywhere, even to your neighbors. Then the larva climb someplace “safe” and make a lime colored cocoon. Then the Monarch emerges. Ta-da - butterfly!
I've noticed where I live and grew up, the butterflies have become scarce. I usually only see a few white cabbage moths.
As a former entomologist -- I appreciate that you helped to educated a few about the difference between insects and spiders. Thanks Lawrence. My favorite insect --- might be the Swallow Tail Butterfly -- (there are several varieties of Swallow Tail) or The Monarch Butterfly. I also like Tiger Beetles - (they are predators).
Luna and Cecropia moths are stunning as well.
As a person with a severe phobia of anything with more than four legs I have...so many questions for you.
Rhinoceros beetles are neat, too. The look like little versions of their namesake.
Does one ever *truly* become a "former entomologist"? It seems to me that's a lifelong designation, regardless of profession.
Fire ants in the southern US
OMG, I've got a bunch of them this year. Hate em! They frigging hurt when they bite and leave small, round pus pockets, that when they burst leave scars.
Lord! Do not get me started! If ever a creature was spawned of Satan, it's fire ants! We got a breed down here in Texas, they're real small, like thief ants or sugar ants; but they sting worse than the big ones! My poor puppy, Buster, got stung on the tail and hip, he's allergic, I did the best I could, it wasn't enough! I took him to the vet, it cost me $350, I hate those damned ants! Buster is still with me, and we're real careful when we go walking.
Yeah. They were gone for a while but now they're back. Kind of welcome really. They were pushed out by itty bitty crazy ants. Although crazy ants don't sting like fire ants, the damn things build nests everywhere and we don't have anything that kills them.
They're absolutely terrible here in Florida. The bastards will go out of their way just to bite you 🤪
I got stung by a whole colony while guiding a group of people on a birding trip during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in South Texas. I was trying to set up the scope to get folks on a couple Burrowing Owls, and low and behold, I stepped right into one of their stinging mounds.
FIRST: Look up the arachnid, "Tarantula."
But THEN: Look up the insect: "Tarantula Hawk Hornet." ... Have fun. Visit the Southwest for both.
Look up "Japanese Giant Hornet."
Then scream. Forever.
Tarantula Hawks are like ALIEN but real. Tarantulas are the crew of the Nostromo and the large black Tarantula Hawks and their freaky bright blood red wings are the disable you with a neurotoxin, egg implanting, drag you to your own burrow to become a living host, facehugger/xenomorph in one.
@@Lycanthromancer1 Yeah. The Japanese Giant Hornet is about the same size as our Tarantula Hawk. No big deal. We get things that big all the time.
@@skylx0812 I used to catch Tarantula Hawks in a jar when I was a kid. We had a bush in our back yard that they really liked the flowers of.
@@ThatBoomerDude56 Japanese giant hornets spit acid, though, and they regularly kill quite a few people all over Japan each year by stinging them to death.
They're also the size of the palm of your hand, or thereabouts. And they *_swarm._*
-Cicada killers are terrifying to see.
- Icheumon wasps also can be terrifying.
-humingbrid moths are cool
-lunar moths are awesome.
I have a pet cricket. Took him to the vet who said he has "restless leg syndome". Now $35 a month later for a script, he makes no annoying sounds and I sleep much better.
Your cricket is broken.
You need to cancel your contract with Cricket and use Skype instead.
Uhh...
Once you acclimate to the sounds of the night, crickets and bullfrogs, you will find a silent night to be disquieting.
I never did become inured to the call of loons, wolves, or coyotes, however.
You gotta switch to Cingular.
Your hair is fantabulous. Who is your stylist?
Maybe he's born with it maybe it's quarantine
Molly Meadows this is an underrated comment. I literally laughed out loud!
I was thinking he was going for that I just rolled out of bed to make a video look. Very American!
We call that the Rona style. Because, of course, Corona beer.
LOL
I was born in Florida, I'm now in northern Ohio, and I've lived in several places in between those two points over the course of my 48 years, and I have *never* seen or heard of anyone having a reaction like yours to mosquito bites. I very sincerely believe that you may be allergic. They're not supposed to make you swell like a bee sting, and they certainly don't make most people's eyes swell partially shut. O_o That looked horrendous.
Cicadas are around every year, especially in the South. It’s only a specific type of cicada that only appears in mass quantities every 10-15 years.
We have them every year also but there is a variety that come out every so many years and then it's wild. The shells are everywhere. I think we are about due.
@@colliecoform4854 They emerged this year in the lowcountry...17 years since last time. Amazingly loud!
From Indiana here -- there are different "broods" of cicadas. Some are annual, the huge broods are 17 year, but there are also ones that have timing in between those 2. If my memory serves me, 3 year, 7 year, etc.
Yeah, it’s not “every 10-15 years”, it’s specifically 13 and 17 years, and since they’re prime numbers, different broods of a particular period won’t ever encounter another brood of the same period. (I.e. a 17 year cicada can never meet another brood of 17 year cicadas.) And of course the 13 and 17 year ones won’t meet up except on multiples of 221 years (13x17).
We've had stink bugs in the South since I was a child so at least 60 years. Maybe the original ones were native & not imported from Asia.
Always been around as far as I can remember.
Same at minimum 60 year timeline in Indiana.
I was going to say, they’ve been around IL all my 50+ years.
We have native stink bugs...the Fir seed stink bug in Oregon and then than nasty import showed up. Looks nearly the same too.
Thanks, we've always had stink bugs, thought maybe I was losing my mind during the pandemic.
I used to live near Allentown PA, and there were so many stink bugs there! I never realized that Allentown was the hotspot, but considering it’s Allentown, that doesn’t surprise me.
Maybe this is because of COVID, but I can't imagine not showing crickets and cicadas and including a clip of what they sound like. That's what I was expecting.
Yeah...cicadas (which I'm used to and therefore somewhat comforted by) DO make it sound like the trees are SCREAMING.
My son had one get into his bedroom. He tore trough his room until he caught the thing. His room looked like a disaster had happened in it.
slcRN1971 They are REALLY REALLY loud if they get inside! Lol
I saw a post from an entymologist (big scientist) that a cicada’s “song” has enough decibel power to deafen you.
.
@@cyn37211, you're entirely right, although I believe that's mostly in groups. A summary of a 1995 study that found that "sound pressure levels ranged from 79.8 to 106.2 decibels" was quoted here: www.vice.com/en_us/article/aek3mp/cicada-calls-are-literally-deafening.
That dB level outdoors if you're on a street with LOTS of cicadas in the trees is, indeed, capable of causing permanent hearing damage--it's a similar range to a lawn mower. In season, the local news warns of sitting out in the din for more than 5-10 minutes without hearing protection.
Just 5? I assume you haven't spent much time in the South.
"America's insects will kill you..."
You have us confused with Australia...
If someone doesn't find out until adulthood that they ARE allergic to Bee stings, when they get stung, death can come quickly.
Name something in Australia that won't kill you.
@@jamesdunlap6856 I can't. That whole continent is evil.
I just moved to the South, and I have to agree with you. There are bugs I have never seen before, and then some that are similar to what we had but different.
@@RiverWoods111 not sure what state you're in, but hope you don't have to meet the love bugs. They're awful.
Larry, I enjoy your wit and humor. I don't know how anyone could turn the subject of bugs into anything so funny. But, you have. Keep up the funny videos, great entertainment.
You have "insects" in the Britain.
WE HAVE BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGS!
"Bugs Mr. Rico! Millions of 'em!"
Mobile Infantry FTW! RAH FTW!
you buggers!
COME ON YOU APES, YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?!
@@ffwast "Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today."
"I always get the shakes before a drop...."
As children, on a summer evening near sunset, we would capture fireflies and put them in a glass jar with holes punched in the lid. We would then take them into a dark room and watch them light up. Yes, we would release them. Years later, even though we did not hurt them, I have still a twinge of guilt about it all...
I traveled in the summer to the midwest as a child and did catch fireflies in a jar (but they made me let them go)
SAME. (Though I was just saying to my wife the other day, I'm not sure if I had holes in the lid the first time when I was REALLY young. I hope I did. Eep)
We were a bit more gruesome, we pulled their buttons off, which would still glow, and you could stick a few of them together to make a glowing ring.
I'm glad you didn't complain about cicadas' drone. I've always seen them as part of the soundtrack of life in the spring and summer, but some people hate them. I've always been fascinated by their amazing life cycle and their shimmering color.
You didn't talk about the Katydids that make such an incessant noise all summer. Now I live on the west coast where the insect experience is more like the one in the UK. But, I've been all over the US and Katydids are memorable LOL
Yes, I used to live near a wooded area, and they would sing “Katydid, Katydid, Katydidn’t! My young son loved them☺️💕
No, "Firefly" is a much-loved, short-lived, Joss Whedon space western tv show. Browncoats are not insects either.
@Jacob McMahan Can't stop the signal!
The alliance are gorram hundan insects
Katydid. They sing in the summer when it’s hot. Look like a leaf.
Love them! And their call at night is a lullaby for me.
And sometimes they come in shades of pink. Really!!
I love how this dude completely ignores the political situation, bravo.
And I’m seriously thankful for it. Thanks Mr Pond, if you’re reading this
@@andycockrum1212 Me too. I won't even watch the news anymore. All I see is Covid, protests, riots, Trump, Biden, Asian Hornets invading, etc. If he did, I'd stop watching! I actually enjoy watching his clips as they are!
Jason Bequette the best part
I watch these to get away from that crap
Why should he? It's toxic right now.
I remember growing up in NJ, when the cicadas did finally emerge their corpses would litter the ground in such numbers as to form a carpet. You could walk anywhere outside and never actually touch the ground, since you'd be walking on top of cicada corpses the whole way. It was super gross.
Back in the early 60s. I was just a kid. We used to play with empty cicada cases. They made good monsters for Little Green Army Men to fight.
"Mosquitoes are wankers"... I'm gobsmacked. Didn't see that one coming!
I enjoy these 'American things I learned about after moving here'videos! I would also like to hear more of the reverse. (Things Americans would find in Britain). I know there are some of these, but more would be nice!
Yellow Jackets nearly killed my brother-He was cutting grass for the Veterans of foreign wars in a grave yard and ran over a nest Got stung over 80 times and his heart stopped 4 times in the hospital--His heart is now down to 25% efficiency...
I hate yellow jackets!! Stepped on a nest once while wearing flip flops. Got stung several times in the foot and a few other places. Not as bad as your brother but got light headed and vomited and couldn't walk for a while. Foot and leg blew up like a balloon. Hurt like he'll!
Brits have them but they call them wasps
That's awful! Doing a good deed and nearly killed. You didn't mention how long ago this happened. I hope there's still hope for his heart to recover.
LOL looking at your eye made me laugh out loud. But then again, the same thing happened to me and my eye swelled shut during a camping trip. I remember my then teenage daughter breaking out in laughter at my eye at a resteraunt on our way home.....
When I lived in the hills south of Pittsburgh, we used to watch the fireworks on a grassy hillside in our neighborhood. Whenever a rocket would go off the fireflies would rise up out the grass and glow, as if to try and compete with the giant firefly in the sky.
I had just moved to Arizona, I was sitting in a lawn chair and looked down, a Tarantula ran across the ground. My first thought was Oh no someone lost their pet. Then the light bulb went off. Arizona land of the Big Bugs.
It's been my experience that tarantulas don't run.
@@itsme-rt7nz ok ambeld
Ok thanks for the warning and I’ll make sure to never visit AZ.
itsme tarantulas are fast!
Years ago when I drove otr I stopped off at a rest area somewhere in AZ. Everything was fine till I looked up on the wall of the stall I was in, just a big ole tarantula chilling there. I've had em as pets do didn't bother me but just found it kinda funny.
I’m from Ohio, now living in Texas. This place is totally different than anything you have experienced so far. Uninvited Lizards in the house on a regular basis, a barbecue is not a cookout, pee-can debate continues and don’t get me started on the overpasses, near Dallas they are stacked 4 or 5 high. Just crazy!!!
I don't even think he put pants on for this one
lol
🤣
Did you ever think he did for any of them unless he was full in frame? I wouldn't have had I been making YT vids.
He certainly didn’t brush his hair.
I wonder what happened? He doesn't look like his normal self.
You can get a good estimate of the outside temperature by listening to the chirp of a cricket. Add 40 to the number of chirps in 14 seconds.
In Fahrenheit.
I've never seen or heard a mosquito in UK so they were a new experience for me too, when I moved to Hungary in 2010.
Florida: "FIRE ANTS"!! Truly, demons from hell!
Texas here, AMEN! Those little bastards are a plague! I always loved this commercial for killing fire ants. ua-cam.com/video/FhXl9_K_9qE/v-deo.html
My aunt once lit up a fire ant mound, only to inadvertently stand in their escape route. Those SOBs waited until those in the lead got up to her shoulders, then they all started biting at once. Never seen anything like it. It was like they consciously chose to maximize their revenge.
(FWIW, if you put Bert's Bees Res-Q ointment on the bites fast enough, they won't form a welt. I never go anywhere without the stuff.)
I live in South Carolina, can verify
Don’t leave out Alabama!!!! 3 ft tall red anthills!!! Thankfully I moved back to NC and we just have tiny red ant hills that seem a little less aggressive lol 😂
@@brendag1482 difficult logically to believe however easy to suspend disbelief. After a few encounters with fire ants.
Just wait until you encounter deerflies or horseflies.
Deerflies look like regular flies...but slightly larger and only black/grey...and they bite. Hard.
Horseflies....are HUGE and really ugly, and also bite...very hard. I suggest using permethrin when out of doors where you're likely to encounter either of them.
Oh...and do you have June Bugs? Those humongous brown beetles that show up at night in June? Harmless, but....yeah.
Oh God June bugs... They run into everything and you can hear the impact of their hard bodies. And you have to be careful not to let them get caught in your hair or clothes with their sticky claws.
They're the second dumbest insect on the planet. The dumbest being crane flies, or "gallanippers" (gallon-nippers) as my parents called them. They look just like enormous mosquitos with a three inch wingspan and long useless legs. They can barely fly, and they can't go anywhere or do anything but bump into walls when they do.
Got a lot of June bugs this year, way before June.
@@judyvalencia3257 We always seem to get them in July where I live in NC. The Japanese Beetles show up in June instead.
A June bug smacking into your unprotected body hurts like hell and leaves a mark when cruising on a motorcycle.
@@HermanVonPetri sounds like what my grandparents use to call Skeeter eaters.
Lightening bugs are magical. When you drive to the country, you can see fields with thousands of them flying around. You see them in the city, but not as much as in the country. I live In Virginia. I'm about an hour away from the country. I don't get down there often, but I love to go when it's time for the lightening bugs to appear.
These bugs basically make up 99% of bugs i think about. It kinda blows my mind that they’re America specific.
They are not. Except for the Cicada, they're really not.
North Florida, where everything bites, stings, stinks, gets in your eyes, or destroys paint jobs. Basically America's Australia.
Thanks for explaining the mosquitos in England. I have been binge watching episodes of Midsomer Murders and really wondered why so many people seemed to live close to stagnant ponds where in the US you would get eaten alive and it never seemed to bother them at all.
I have heard that midges are a real problem in Britain though.
“All kids like bugs, they’re cute...especially fireflies... their butts light up.”
(Dan Aykroyd as “Roman Craig”, “The Great Outdoors 1988)
My brother had a mosquito snaking on his forearm and he flexed it and the mosquito exploded. It was great.
Wow! I had no idea that the wonderful, fun lightning bug/firefly was peculiar to the USA? How fun!!!
Fireflies are found in temperate and tropical regions on every continent except Antarctica. They live throughout the United States in parks, meadows, gardens, and woodland edges. They are most commonly seen on summer evenings.
Awesome video! I've been an insect enthusiast since I was 5 and still love to observe and identify different ones that I encounter.
My favorite is probably the praying mantis, although I do love dragonflies and stag beetles too.
True story: I once saw a praying mantis fight off a bird that was trying to make a meal out of the mantis. It stood up as tall as it was capable of doing and waved its forelegs in the air. The bird tried a couple times to catch the praying mantis; it kept bluffing and finally the bird gave up and let the mantis alone. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it.
Bugs in the UK are obviously more polite, you don't even need screens! I was watching this while listening to crickets, catching the occasional firefly out of the corner of my eye and worrying about mosquitoes, because I hadn't put on bug spray (back deck of my house). I don't mind crickets because I'm used to them, but when cicadas come out it's very annoying! Stink bugs have become a more recent problem here in Ohio. I just take a sturdy piece of mail that isn't important, scoop them up and send them outside.
I've always fantasized about living somewhere you don't need screens on the windows! Wonder what that would be like? I'm a southerner so the bugs are endless.
@@agoogleuser4443 Yeah, I remember being on a forum once that had a chat between some people moving to the US from the UK and one was moving to Florida and said he wouldn't put screens in his windows and all the Americans were like: "Ooh, buddy! You REALLY might wanna rethink that!" (I'm a Southerner too, so just opening my door for less than a minute lets in a TON of bugs, so I can't imagine not having screen windows)
I just love your humor. Plus you say things without cracking a smile. Keep up the great work.
Your info on stink bugs only relates to a single species - the brown marmorated. I know that we had stink bugs in south Louisiana in the 1960s, maybe not that species.
Yeah, the native stink bug species is bigger, and built more like a mini praying mantis. And very light green.
Yeah we have a black and orange one down here that looks nothing like the one he shows in the video.
@@EmeryJude ...glad we don't have those up north. The ugly imports he showed are bad enough. And he also didn't mention they get in houses to escape the winter. And the minute you turn on heat and a light, they ALL show up. Ick.
I don't know if the "stink" is only a defense but, it may be a call to arms like with the Asian Beetle. When squashing a beetle it will emit.. pheromones? that signal they are being attacked and MORE beetles will come! They say to pick them up with a tissue and never squash it and then flush it. If there are a load of them, use a vacuum cleaner to collect them and pitch the bag immediately. I don't know if any of these tips would apply to stink bugs, should there be an infested area. But, I've never heard of a house being infested with stink bugs like with the beetles, either.
I'm not sure what you mean by stink bugs but we've had stink bugs in Tennessee all my life and I'm 67.
You’re missing cicada killers & velvet ants. The North American version of a murder hornet and the honey badger of the insect world, respectively.
You ever step on a velvet ant (wasp) just enough to make it mad but not kill it. They can make some Interesting sounds.
@@chrissede2270, yeah, sounds that you can feel as well as hear
Holy shit your not kidding. The Cicada Killer Wasp is no joke. I live in Connecticut and They burrow in my front lawn every year and every time you walk by they fuck with you.. my dad used to pour gasoline down the holes lol
I love Cicada Killers! I like to think of them as my little buddies. They are very docile... we can mow right over their nest holes and those BA ladies just go about their business... no f*cks given.
I live in Kansas and had never seen a cicada killer until about 3 years ago. OMG, I ran inside the house so fast and didn't leave it for the rest of the day. I have a horrible phobia of regular wasps, that thing was literally my worst nightmare.
The day before Hurricane Irene got here was a beautiful sunny summer day, and when I left to go to work I realized that all the nighttime noises were being made during the day. Crickets, cicadas and even tree frogs were singing loudly. I guess they could sense the coming storm. The weird thing was that not a single person besides me seemed to notice the noise.
I've lived in America my whole life, and I've never seen a firefly. It's something I've always wanted to do.
The fireflies are disappearing...
@@kirbyculp3449 I'd better hurry up then!
They are disappearing because of outdoor lighting. It's called light pollution and is affecting many other species. Keep the lights off outside!
I still get excited every time I see them, like I’m 5 years old again; it’s ridiculously enchanting
Go to the midwest in the middle of a field in late july at dusk and you'll be surround
Re: the mosquitos, "he" didn't invite a friend, "she" did. Only female mosquitoes bite.
And they love wonderful people, like ME!
The best part about mosquitoes is the lovely fact that the males, when they're not busy trying to fornicate with the females, actually EAT THE FEMALES!!
Give mankind more "Skeeter-Eaters," please.
The state of Florida recently released 750 million genetically modified male mosquitos in the hopes of controlling the population. They are sterile, so even if they mate with females, that's 750 million less mosquitos next year... in theory. I wish them luck with it, but all I can do is think dire thoughts about a certain movie about genetically modified dinosaurs. I mean, what could go wrong....?
John S, UF is the institution that released the infamous Love bugs. I don’t know what they were supposed to accomplish, but they sure made a mess. It’s Not Nice to Fool With Mother Nature.
@@johns9652 "I hate being right all the time." - Dr. Ian Malcolm
It's 2 years later. You have me laughing out loud. Congratulations! So entertaining and so educational at the same time.
Actually, some cultures _do_ eat stink bugs. Apparently the chemical that gives them their distinct odor is also present in cilantro, so they're blended up and used to flavor sauces. Thank goodness I hate cilantro.
Also, it's important to note that the "stink" of stink bugs isn't a putrid/rancid/fetid/fecal "stink" so much as a waxy, permeating chemical smell. The worst part isn't the smell itself, but the fact that it sticks to your skin/clothes if you handle the bugs and takes a long time to wash off.
I've found the best way to get rid of a stink bug in the house without triggering its odor glands is to gently wrap it in a tissue without applying pressure to the bug, then flush it down the toilet. Whatever you do, don't crush it. That'll release the maximum stink all over your hands.
Do you have Box Elder bugs in Britain? They're harmless but they get everywhere.
Growing up in eastern Montana, I still get the creepy crawlies thinking about box elder bugs everywhere!
called'em McKinley bugs in Iowa.
Hi, no we don't have Box Elder bugs in the UK, but I have experienced them a lot on Iowa, atleast I have never come across them in the UK
In Illinois, in the summer, our white garage door would turn black and red. Remember these vividly.
Ugh i hate those!! Im in MN. Also june bugs, assholes latch onto you
In michigan specifically by lake saint clair in the summer from late June to July we get fishflies. They can only be found near certain lakes where they nest and hatch. They only live for a few days. And they pop like popcorn when they get run over by cars. There's millions of them each year. They can also be called mayflies and some other names.
The Mayflies are all over, they're particularly horrific if you're on a sailboat. There is a race between Toledo and Put-in-Bay across Lake Erie during peak Mayfly season. The boats leave white and come in black as they are covered in Mayflies AAAAGGH!
I grew up in Florida in the 70s and 80s and we had stink bugs, and yes they really stink bad and the smell is hard to get rid of
Box Elder Bugs are collectively known as stink bugs, and are native across the eastern U.S.
When you said you feet were britten by mosquitoes it's more likely it was chiggers. Chiggers really itch and I would rather be bitten by a mosquito any day.
You got that right! Chigger bites are horrible! I sat down briefly on a fallen tree trunk in a hiking area, just long enough to swing my legs over it to keep walking; after I got home, I discovered I had Dozens of chigger (or red bug) bites on the backs of my legs...through the material of my jeans! Those things were misery for me for a couple weeks! AAAH!
Brent Williams truth
In Minnesota the only insect that left a big impression on me aside from mosquitoes were boxelder bugs. I've never encountered them anywhere else and we had a plague like infestation in our basement one year.
Down here by your favorite bridge: the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway... we have a slight mosquito problem. They SUCK!
You funny!
Still water is the worst. Even a puddle or a bucket that has water is a breeding ground. Mosquitoes need an absolutely flat water surface to lay their larvae.. it takes 24 hours for them to grow and take flight. Emptying out standing water is a must but, jossling a bird bath or such and even skipping a stone across flat water, will kill the larvae by causing ripples on the water.
@@AnnieWarbux Good to know! Thanks for the info. 👍
When I was a kid, my family went to Florida for a vacation. There was a super-gigantor cockroach crawling around our motel room, which we spotted as soon as we opened the door for the first time. We went to the office, and the dude was like, "Nah, that's just a Palmetto Bug", and didn't offer to do anything about it. So my Dad took off his boot, went back in and smashed the 'Palmetto Bug' to paste. In doing so, he destroyed the lamp and lampshade upon which it was crawling. I don't believe they remunerated the motel for the tragic loss of their lamp.
the mosquito is the state bird of Mn and Wi.
Cockroaches grow really large and develop wings in hot climates like Hawaii and Florida, and lately some really nasty parts of so Cal.
Vacationers often miss out on authentic Florida experiences, but I'm glad you managed to experience our state the way it was meant to be!
@@julieb3996 How come you guys aren't screaming this from the rooftops? That, right there, is how we get people to care about climate change.
"Want those nuclear proof fuckers to grow wings? No? Well, do something!"
The live in oak trees and normally only found inside during mating season. The FLY
Cicadas singing is a beautiful noise that takes me back to childhood. That grainy "ree-eeeee, ree-eeeee, ree-eeeeee" will always be relaxing to me.
For those who have never encountered a stink bug, their odor is exactly like the strongest cilantro you have ever smelled, times 100.
Actual Stink Bugs which are large and Black and don't fly smell much much worse, one of them got into a Sears and sprayed it's stink and the whole place was cleared out.
We had green stink bugs in Georgia when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's. They looked just like the brown one except green and they smelled horrible. Especially if you squashed one.
Cicadas around here in Texas sound like Bruce Banner just turned into the Incredible Hulk. We have had them on the side of our house sounding like a very loud car alarm. It was awful, it was easily one of the loudest sounds I’ve heard.
Also Katydids, Locust in the Southwest. In places like Albuquerque they show up on weather radar. I don’t know what type of wasps you had in the UK, however there are many types here. I grew up where they rice flies. There are so many different insects around the country that a murder was once solved by proving the suspect drove across country to kill someone and drove back to the east coast. They used an entomologist to determine which bugs were in the car’s grill thus proving that he had drove to California.
Until deep sea scientists recently made new discoveries, the Insecta Kingdom was the One Kingdom that Scientists thought had NOT been fully Classified. ("Classy" is a slang term from Classified. Classified means "grouped" which makes it Impossible for a person to HAVE Class. They can only be OF a Class) Anyway, insects are constantly crossbreeding, mutating and adapting so, the Kingdom ever grows. One of the Highest Paid Jobs in "Insectology" is when they pay people to explore obscure habitats all over the World, setting up nets, fogging the habitat to desensitize insects as they fall into the nets and they work to identify, discover and categorize the insects as fast as they can so they can get the hell out before they wake! The concern is not just the deadly insects they know about but, the ones they DON'T! Big Money! This Classifying must be done! Many of our Medicines come from Animals, Plants and Insects. Which is why we are further destroying ourselves with climate change because of the loss of the rare species of insects (with their habitats) that could save lives! We need insects. We could not survive without most of them but, mosquitoes??? Killer Hornets? They can Go!
Our cicadas in New Orleans sound like the Mardi gras indians with a tambourine!
David Terry Ah, yes, Albuquerque’s cicada summers during which they perform their dance of death on the sidewalks.
The Mermaid's Tale We drove through on I-10 in 2006 around Lordsburg where millions of giant grasshoppers covered the road to the point the road was slick and hard to drive on We stopped at a rest area and opening the door you almost couldn’t do so without putting your hand on them They were so large our dog could see them from about 20’ away
David Terry Ugh, I know they’re nature’s creatures, but not my favs; them and locusts. I bet swarms will eat the clothes off your body.
Ever seen a palmetto bug? We are awash with them in the south. They make a delightful POP when you step on them in the dark on the way to the restroom. They also have a light feathery touch as a discovered upon waking the find one digging for lunch in my mustache.
That one long hair on the right side of your head is driving me crazy. 😂
You noticed that too? For the love of mercy, comb your hair Laurence!
Other insects you won't find in Britain include:
Jerusalem crickets - These are not true crickets, and they don't make the typical cricket sounds. They can deliver a nasty bite. They're also *ugly*.
Monarch butterflies
Bay checkerspot butterflies
Jerusalem crickets are known locally as Potato Bugs. They are enormous. I've never knew they had a bite. They aren't so common that I've ever known anyone to mess with one -- you grab it and throw it out the door -- unless the wife has beaten it to death with a broom.
We call them Child of the Earth and are creepy beyond belief!
I live in PA and unfortunately there are way, way more stink bugs in my house than I ever see outside. They come in my 1880s built house for the winter. When we moved in circa 2000 it was hundreds of ladybugs. So sorry it changed.
Cicadas. The one insect that makes me want to stick my head out the window and yell "Shut up!"
they sat that they come out every 17 years. they do not tell you that each year the old ones mate so there is a never ending crop of them,
Japan wants to know your location.
My dog got full on cicadas last time. Free little protein snacks flying around everywhere!
I met a scotsman who wondered why in American movies everyone clean off their windscreens. Then he came to Dallas, Tx and said, "You have huge bugs and they are filled with porridge".
Lmao, Yep! Live around the area and driving at dusk in spring is asking for it Lol
@@talonofravens3695 I drove through a swarm of love-bugs once. It was a task to clean them all off.
@@chrisazure1624 Oof
I’m from the Allentown, PA area and my first job out of college I worked at the Penn State cooperative extension office with the entomologist that discovered the stink bug here in the U.S.
I grew up in Chicago suburbs. When I saw the title, I thought "Oh yeah, Lightning Bugs and Cicadas are totally on this list". The Mosquito one surprised me. I thought the Brits would have more experience with them. If you think the normal Midwest Mosquitoes are bad, you should go visit Minnesota. The mosquito is Minnesota's unofficial state bird and those little devils literally can bite through jeans (what a horrifying surprise). They were the most aggressive mosquitoes I have ever experienced. When we camped up there, all normal bug spray failed. Those bugs bathe in the Walmart brands of bug spray and they dine on the "organic bug sprays". By trial and error, we discovered the only thing that worked with those little blood sucking terrorists was spraying permethrin (actual insecticide) on our clothes and tents and spraying 100% Deet spray on ourselves. Yeah, no one likes the mosquitoes.....
the farther north you go the worse the mosquitoes are said to be
I remember ½ - ¾" Northern mosquitoes, their bite can raise a 2 toned 1" welt & itch fiercely for a week. Calamine lotion or other topical relief is neccessary.
The Florida mosquito, is like a soft, fluffy puppy. It's about ¼ - ⅜ inch big, a miniature. When it bites your skin might turn red at the site, and be annoying for 24 hrs. Sometimes you can locate the bite 3 days later because it's a little red dot, where it once itched.
Have you tried basil ? They hate it and mint both just crush a few leaves and rub it on your skin .We can go in the worst areas and they avoid us same with gnats and biting flies they don't like it either .We do a lot of night fishing and I get devoured by every bug out there ,they don't go near her she just takes a small pot and breaks off a few leaves and she fishes in peace plus it doesn't smell that bad .I didn't believe her until I tried it myself something she learned as a landscaper working in mosquito prone areas .Don't use lavender or any floral scents it attracts yellow jackets and bees Skin so soft by Avon is good also been used down here in the deep south forever to keep the biters away .Mosquitoes can be really bad down here also .I am not sure if would work up there but it does down here to avoid yellow jackets just pour out a soda on the ground far away ,stale beer works great also to attract them away from you something about the yeasty smell attracts all manner of biting bugs .The soda works really good with the pollinators .It is how she keeps them away from her honeybees in her gardens just buys a cheap 3 litre and pours it out well away from her when working in her gardens or hives .They love soda the sweeter the better works with fire ants and keeping them all away from her hummingbird and butterfly feeders but the honeybees prefer the flowers instead of the sweet soda .It is worth a try next time you go camping oh dryer sheets work good also
I'm in the north & ALLERGIC to them, like Lawrence's eye lid showed.
@@kennethmcdonald2987 I'll try to remember Basil. Skeeters adore me, the sentiment is un reciprocated.
I had an old friend of mine who lived in the county with an outdoor hot tub. It was surrounded by mint that had gone wild. Peppermint, spearmint & lemon mint, growing like weeds out of control all around that property, never a mosquito in sight.