It’s October and most of Indiana is getting geared up for Halloween. Costumes, candy, and those little fake spider webs strung on the front porch. Sometimes getting creeped-out is kind of fun. At least, when the spiders aren’t real. So, as our Halloween contribution, here are what we consider to be four of Indiana’s creepiest and crawliest pests.

It seems that the more legs a bug has, the creepier it is. Most types of centipedes in Indiana have 15 sets of legs, so 30 legs total. If they lose a leg, they just grow it back. Their legs make them super-fast too, which just ups their creepy-factor.  

Centipedes pose no threat to humans or other mammals like your cats or dogs. They just want to find a meal of other bugs – bugs you REALLY don’t want in your home. Centipedes are known to catch and eat bugs like roaches, mosquitoes, and even wasps!  

If you live in an area with a lot of trees, you might find that stinkbugs like to hang out around or inside your home, especially in the winter months. This is because they like the shelter and warmth your home offers. In winter, they enter a semi-dormant state, and just like to hang out in one place to wait for spring.  

Sometimes during a snap of warmer weather, they can come out of their dormant state and fly (or “fall”) around aimlessly in the home. They seem to drop out of nowhere. This can be especially creepy for a homeowner who suddenly finds a half-asleep stinkbug in their coffee.  

Cicadas are well-known for their 17-year emergence cycle. Every 17 years, there appear hordes of cicadas on what seems like every natural surface in Indiana. We do see other species of cicadas in the years in-between, but not in such huge numbers. Walking past a group of trees in the summer, especially on the 17 ^th  year, seems to elicit an unusually loud “song” of the cicada’s buzzing sounds. It can be pretty eerie. 

Another reason cicadas are on the list of Indiana’s creepiest pests? Their shells. Exoskeleton, really. Cicadas live most of their lives as a nymph underground. At night, they emerge from the soil, climbing to the nearest vertical surface, and split the exoskeleton down the middle to allow the emergence of the adult cicada. So now, we’re left with both a very large flying bug, and a crunchy shell stuck to a tree.  Creepy.

Black Widow spiders are actually the only pest on our list that are dangerous to humans. Though there are horror stories of their venom killing humans, this is rarely the case. They are not aggressive and do not want to be disturbed. While Black Widow spider bites are rare, but they may be serious enough to land you in the hospital and cause severe pain.  

Of course a venomous spider is creepy enough as it is, but what’s even creepier about a Black Widow is how it got its name. Their name and scary reputation actually come from the females’ unusual ritual of eating her male counterpart after mating. Only females are venomous. Males and juvelines are harmless. 

Many of the pests in Indiana aren’t necessarily dangerous to humans (although some of them do carry disease, but that’s a story for another blog post), and some of these creepy little guys are actually good. But we get it – you don’t want them in your home! Give us a call today to get Indiana’s creepiest and crawliest pests back to their homes.

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