This little fellow decided to pay us a visit yesterday in our camp. I hope he has no friends. He was a good 3 1/2 inches long.

Can't post a pic, they haven't put it on a website for me to xref (gotta love that UBB stuff). There's plenty others to search for the the web.


This brings up an important question. If you are boonied, how to you guard against unwanted visitors looking for a warm bed?

I have been stung only once (It was enough) but have had them around most of my life. In our house they kept the roaches almost eliminated in one place I lived in as a kid. Of course you had to turn on the lights if you were going to get up at night to give them fair warning to run out of the way and always shake your shoes out before you put them on. I got stung because I was walking around barefooted at night so I stepped on one that I did not see.

Well like so many things it is situation dependant and there isnt one answer that will work for everyone in every locale. Where I camp a few green cedar branches cut and laid out on the ground next to my sleeping pad keep the crawlers away and a little green cedar on the fire keeps the fliers away. I even sometimes make a little a-frame tarp roof from a space blanket to give the ticks something to land on other than me as they fall out of the trees. Of course I fall asleep eventually and that cedar doesnt burn all night and sometimes the ticks that fall off my tarp (if I'm even using one) fall between me and my cedar branch. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Not sure what else to say other than luck plays a part. I camp without a tent in an area with all kinds of nasty critters like poisonous snakes, brown recluse spiders, ticks infected with lyme disease and predator mamals. I do what I can to protect myself and my dog and don't dwell on what I can't do.

I had somehow imagined them to be quite common there. No?