#pests and pest control

[great-and-small]

Apparently the local university’s undergraduate entomology course sends students to catch insect specimens at the same place I like to go birdwatching, which explains why I saw three enormous frat looking dudes with tiny bug nets and overheard one emphatically say “bro BRO I told you we already have enough lepidopterans”

[thehmn]

Advice nobody ever asks for but every time I tell someone they find it extremely useful:

If you want to get rid of ants in your house mix a cup of icing sugar and a cup of potato starch 50/50 (dry, no water) and spread it near the holes where the ants get into your house. They won’t be able to separate the sugar and starch and will feed their larvae with the mixture. The starch will kill the larvae. So you won’t see results right away but if you keep it up you’ll get rid of them over a few weeks. I make a batch every summer to combat ants in my kitchen.

Because the mixture is non-toxic to humans and other mammals it’s perfect if you have children or pets. God knows my dogs eat anything on the floor and this way my only worry is they might get cavities if they get into my pest control powder.

[creativesparkz]

another day , another tvbeetle propaganda post

[beastiesandsundries]

A detail about khajiit that I find absolutely hilarious but also see a lot of potential worldbuilding in is their love of sweets and reverence for moon sugar. If you don't know, a theorized reason for and/or result of cats being obligate carnivores is that they CANNOT TASTE SWEETNESS, a flavor normally associated with plants (fruits, nectar, etc.) meanwhile khajiit are known to have an unyielding, insatiable sweet tooth. But this could be super interesting considering the fact that common house cats very much exist, and the Alfiq furstock can be almost indistinguishable visually from them, that there is a lot of wives tales and traditions around "testing" housecats to root out khajiit infiltrators (or to make sure that the kitten your kid brought home isn't some young nonverbal khajiit child they inadvertently kidnapped). The first meal offered to a new cat before being set upon mice might be a bowl of candies and cakes, and a second bowl of skinned raw meat. A house cat will always go to the raw meat (apparently), whereas the bowl of dessert is said to tempt khajiit spies into breaking. Or if they don't, they may break trying to choke down raw, unseasoned, slimy and smelly bits of offal. And I like to think it is a method that has a somewhat reliable success rate.

The best khajiit alfiq spies have figured out with their magical talents to alter the raw meats while in their mouths to be more palatable, or simply have the discipline and willpower to stomach the raw meat without retching. But the next challenge comes in resisting the temptation to sneak a nibble of a pie...

[twinsimming]

Pest Control by Twinsimming 🐞

Sims with dirty homes now run the risk of roaches spawning around their lot, similar to The Sims 2.

This is a script mod that can be placed in your Packages folder. It was built and tested on 1.69 but should work fine on 1.67.

Roaches

Once a day the number of dirty objects on your sim's home lot will be counted, and if the Dirty Threshold is met or exceeded, roaches have a chance of spawning.

There are three thresholds: Dirty, Filthy, and Vile. The dirtier the lot is, the more likely roaches are to spawn and in greater numbers.

Dirty Threshold = 5 dirty objects, 10% spawn chance (2 to 4 roach spawners)

Filthy Threshold = 10 dirty objects, 20% spawn chance (4 to 6 roach spawners)

Vile Threshold = 15 dirty objects, 30% spawn chance (6 to 8 roach spawners)

All sims in the active household will get the new Vermin custom moodlet that lasts 12 hours and subtracts -15, -20, or -25 points from your sim's mood depending on the threshold the lot meets.

Roaches spawning also carries a 10% chance of a sim getting sick (like TS2).

New Moodlet

Vermin: Given when roaches spawn on a sim’s home lot, lasts 12 hours, -15. -20, or -25 mood (inspired by TS2 memory)

Tuning

All of the tunable values can be found on the mod download page under the header “Tuning”.

Conflicts & Known Issues

Depending on the terrain paint, roaches may be harder to see. To find any roach spawners you may have missed:

Enter build/buy mode.

Enable buydebug cheat.

Look for any white boxes on your lot. Those are the roach spawners.

Enter live mode.

Stomp on the roaches.

Success!

This is a new script mod so there shouldn’t be any conflicts.

Credits

EA/Maxis for The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, Visual Studio 2019, ILSpy, s3pe, Notepad++, Gimp, and Script Mod Template Creator.

Thank You

Thank you to @monocodoll for helping with a scripting issue!

If you like my work, please consider tipping me on Ko-fi 💙

Download @ ModTheSims

[catboy-morro]

image redraws and other whimsy

[lavemdersmekk]

cough ,.give me a second

[snazzycrown]

Drew a thing, their designs are just so comforting to draw!!

[los-plantalones]

D:

[great-and-small]

christians annoying as fuck. you know bugs don't have thoughts or feeling right

Quite a few strange assumptions here all jumbled in at once

1. That I am christian?

2. That christians are morally opposed to killing insects?

3. That someone would only be opposed to eliminating an entire species because they think it will make bugs sad?

4. That animals only deserve to exist if they think or feel as we do? Fuck all the coral I guess.

5. That we can even know for certain that invertebrates do not think or feel?

This is inferior hate mail with a weak and lazy thesis. I suspect your mind is much sharper than you have presented it here.

[wolveryene]

His name suits him ngl.

[itz-spirit]

Another set of doodels

REGRETEVATOR

[dystopianroach]

people who kill spiders and snakes in or around their home and then pay for chemical-based pest control confuse me. you had everything you needed right there… bonus points for them becoming confused afterward on why one spray doesn’t work forever until the end of time, or why their beloved household pet is suddenly displaying strange symptoms such as skin rashes, vomiting, and periodic seizures; almost as if illness was a vampire that you willingly invited in.

[birds-and-the-birds]

Every year at the beginning of spring an eastern phoebe gets stuck on the porch

[koadasoada]

Behold! THE STINK BUG SPIDEERRR!!