[Mattie Jo]

My brother warned me about moving here. He said that they have a lot of bugs, and I said, “I love bugs.” Well, I do; most that is, and only a fire ant could make me move.

Here is what a poster wrote to me on another forum:

Oklahoma has lots and lots of biting insects. I'll list some of the more common ones and you can be on the lookout for them. Some insects actually bite you, some sting you, and some of them just want to suck your blood. Here are the most common ones:

Scorpions--when they sting you, you feel it and it really hurts, so they probably are not your problem at this point

Fire Ants--like scorpions, there is an immediate painful and burning sensation and you know right when it occurs

Sweat Bees--tiny bees that can sting--sometimes they sting, sometimes they don't

Deer Flies--sucks blood like mosquitoes do

Yellow Jackets--very painful sting

Brown Recluse Spider--often you don't notice when they bite you

Black Widow Spider--most dangerous of our biting arachnids

American Dog Tick--can crawl around on you, searching for the perfect place to attach itself and suck your blood

Honey Bees--sting you and you feel it pretty fast

Mosquitoes--attach themselves to you and suck your blood

Wheel bugs--puncture your skin

Saddleback caterpillars--have stinging hairs on their bodies

Io moth caterpillars--have stinging hairs on their bodies

Fleas--often found in sandy soil, esp. if previous homeowner had flea-infested pets

Gnats--could be doing it, but they are usually out in swarms and you would notice them.

Chiggers like to hide in damp areas with tall grasses and plants. They also like to hang out in mulch in flower beds and in native leaves/mulch, etc. in woodlands.
Whatever is biting you is most likely to be skeeters, chiggers or sand fleas.

There are also some very tiny deer ticks. It is possible the ticks or fleas are getting on y'all, biting you and then going away....you might be washing them off when you take a shower after working outside, so you never see the bugs themselves, just their bites.

By the way, almost ALL insects have the ability to either bite or sting as a way of protecting themselves from 'predators' so it really could be almost anything at all. Most humans will not have an adverse affect to every single bug that bites them.

Chigger Mites--attach themselves to you and suck your blood. Usually stay attached for about 3 days. It sounds like you are familiar with them and know the symptoms. It is also possible that early in the season you will have less of a reaction to chigger bites than you will later in the season with repeated exposure.

If you don't like to spray insect repellents on your skin (and I don't!), why not spray your clothing to keep the biting insects away? It works for me.

Now I can handle chiggers and mosquitoes, but the ticks are something else. My husband was recently biten by one and didn’t know it was on him until a few days went by. We got it off but he is sick now but without a fever, so he won’t go to the doctor. I have done a lot of research and so far it seems like he is just sick from the bite and not from a disease, but I am worried. He is better today.

Now as for fire ants. Well, anyone thinking of moving to OK and loves gardening will need to look at the fire ant map that the Internet provides, just google "fire ants, Oklahoma." They are only in the south part of Oklahoma so far. I wouldn’t dream of trying to garden where we have fire ants and will move if we ever get any here. You can’t walk outside and stand for even a few seconds without them swarming on you. I know because I lived in the panhandle of Florida for a brief time.

I have just discovered the gnats, or they discovered me; I don’t know which. In this rainy weather they are all around my eyes just bugging me. I wonder if safety glasses will help? Maybe goggles.

I love caterpillars and like to hold them in my hands, but now that I see that we have some very scary ones, I won’t pick up any unless I know what they are.

Now here is a big one for me. I was rinsing out the kitchen sink with hot water and noticed that I had harmed a spider, so I thought maybe since its legs were still trying to move I would help it outside. I got a knife and used it to pick it up. I put in on the back porch; it didn’t move. I decided to see if it was a brown recluse, and so I got a magnifying glass and saw the violin on its body part, and I didn’t like the tune he was playing, so I smashed him. At that moment I was so glad that I was no longer a Buddhist, you know, those people that don’t kill insects? (Hey, I was at a monastery in CA and went into their restroom and found a black widow and nest behind the toilet. I told them about it, saying that it could bite someone and the egg could hatch and spread them all over. They removed the spider before my next visit, but they left the egg. I took out the egg and smashed it when no one was looking. My Buddhist days are over, and they should have been over when they said to not harm a mountain lion, to just run from it, because when I said, “You would then be prey,” I got this funny look from a monk that said, “Are you sure? But if they do get you it would just be your karma.”) Well, now I think, it is this spider’s karma to be killed by me. Anyway, now I am worried about brown recluse spiders. I don’t want poisonous sprays in my house, so I talked to a man at Lowe’s, and he said, “Use these sticky traps.” Okay. But then I worried about baby mice getting on them and their screaming for help, but I haven’t seen or heard mice, much less seen mouse ****. He said that I could get the mouse off and let it go, and I added, "And I will let it go a mile down the road." So I bought them, and this morning there was a brown recluse on one I had under my bedroom dresser. I know because I got out my magnifying glass again. So far the other traps are free of insects and spiders. (My husband, when buying a flag today, was told to get more traps, which he did.) I shake out my clothes now, but I still wonder if one remains in them. I look at my bed covers before retiring.

And then I was vacuuming in the living room under a cedar chest, when this big hairy spider the size of a silver dollar or a fifty cent piece, depending on the size of my imagination, was caught and sucked up the hose.

And my husband opened the bathroom window, which didn't have a screen at the time. By morning we had two black beetles in the room; I helped one outside, someone else accidentally smashed another. My husband went into the bathroom that night and something flew at him, so he put up the screen.
Another unidentifiable flying insect was in the tub that morning, so I let it out.

But you know the butterflies are wonderful here, and the birds are as well. I have dealt with most of these other bugs most of my life, so they don’t scare me, not even black widow spiders because they at least stay hidden, unlike the brown recluse that wander around at night into your bed and clothing.

And so far we do not have killer bees.

[Synopsis]

I hate spiders with a passion. And those brown recluse spiders seem to be rather populous, especially when the weather is wet. We have them here in Texas as well, and I'll take fire ants any day over those nasty buggers. I just put out some all season fire ant control out on my lawn about twice a year and that takes care of them, but I hear the brown recluse are almost impossible to get rid of, even when you poison them (and I don't like using pesticides either, but when it comes to safety - I'm going to use the tools at hand). You might try a little diatomaceous earth (DTE). I hear that is good for insect control - you just sprinkle some of it in those areas that are out of the way. Just the subject of spiders gives me the willies. I hate everything about them, except for the daddy longlegs - they are the good guys of the spider world. Tarantulas - don't even get me talking about them. As for scorpions, I don't think they are really prevalent in Eastern Oklahoma; they mostly inhabit the drier portions of the state (Southwest and West). Below is a map of their habitat in the US.

[Okiebound]

I met up with them while in Texas. Mean critters. Spray them with Mosquito
spray such ass OFF and watch them die and turn crunchy. Doing this two or three times in your yard and they move on.

[Mattie Jo]

So now they have a way to control fire ants. 15 years ago when I lived in Florida nothing worked, but then if you are out in the country with a large piece of land, it could get expensive, and then the other farmers did nothing about their land. There were mounds every 5 feet apart.

I read it is hard to get rid of brown recluse too. For me I would prefer spiders because there are less of them. In Florida I would wake up with fire ant bites, just to learn, when lifting up the rug, that they were using it as a trailway all through the house. I tried everything.

[Synopsis]

Ya, but I've been bitten several times by fireants and it just hurts a bit. This (http://home.panhandle.rr.com/lorddrake/BrownRecluse_Day_10.jpg - broken link) (Warning: the picture is disgusting) is what can happen with brown recluse bites.
Plus, with fireants I can control the area around my house. With the brown recluse, it's pretty much an ongoing battle and you don't know where they can hide.

[Jammie]

OMG Synopsis, I should've heeded your warning. That is awful!

I had no idea that you had scorpions down that way. More then likely, you have somewhat of a bug problem during the summer because we even have a few up here. Funny thing though that we didn't notice anything like that when we were down there last autumn. Guess we were just lucky.

[Synopsis]

Ya, that is one disgusting picture Jammie. The scorpions are more of a problem in Southern, Southwestern, and Western Oklahoma; they like the drier climates. I had a friend that had a house down in the southern part of the state near Madill and there were plenty of scorpions around there. Up around the Gerty area, where I was raised, I never, ever saw a scorpion and I traipsed around those woods and hills as a boy night and day. In fact, we never had a brown recluse problem as far as I recall, although I heard about "fiddlebacks," as they are often called, and their bad bites. My dad had a really good method for healing bug bites and stings; he dipped snuff and would take a dab out of his mouth and treat wasp stings and such - said that it worked every time to pull out the poison. I wonder if that would be good for a brown recluse bite as well?

[Lannie]

My family is still in Oklahoma (and Texas). A couple of years ago my sister's house became infested with fiddleback spiders, aka - the brown recluse. No one was bitten incredibly. An exterminator had to be called. They were everywhere. The initial infestation was determined to have been the attic (most likely - dark up there and things are pretty much not moved around). Everything was brought down, sprayed and returned. Within just a couple of days the spiders were long gone. She never had a problem before and hasn't had one since. But it was scary. I sue didn't want to visit as often :-)

But you know what Oklahoma has that is even more scary than fire ants and spiders?? TORNADOES!

[StillwaterTownie]

Speaking of bugs I didn't know a state could be so bad for bugs until I started driving through Florida. Before I was half way to my destination so many bugs had splattered on the windshied I had to stop to scrap them off. I've never before had bugs this bad on my windshield before while driving in Oklahoma.

[Synopsis]

I wrote on here in another thread awhile back that I had never seen more bugs in my life than I did one night while moving to Arkansas. I was moving to Danville, Arkansas on September night for my new job.

As I neared Danville, somewhere around Waldron, Arkansas I ran into a swarm of bugs for about 10 miles that was so bad I had to drive 10 or 15 mph to make sure I could even see the road. The windshield was covered with their remains and my wipers were almost useless. I have never in my life seen so many bugs.