Have you ever had any critters get into your home?

[GreyBalonz]

Just a few slugs

I get magpies come into my house and peck at the cupboard that my dog's treats are in.
I put peanuts out for them now. And sometimes they still come in and raid the bag.

They are just sooo cute.
I have seen proper big bats in a zoo in Jersey. Fruit bats that have a massive wing span. They were amazing.

Are you in the US?

As a kid we used to live very rurally and had a river at the bottom of the garden. I remember a couple of ducks in our lounge once, every time DF tried to catch them they pooped. Hilarious for us, not so funny to my DM. Mice seemed to target us every couple of years and we once had a bat fly into the bathroom. As an adult I got a cat who had a penchant for frogs, she’d bring them in and let them go by the sideboard knowing the little buggers would immediately hop underneath, she’d then sit and watch the chaos unfold.

Our current kitty is a prolific bug hunter. She crunched her way through some crickets when we were in the garden this afternoon but it also means our house is critter free

Awwww I bet that was amazing 🥰. Bats are so cool.

Rats.
We lived in an old house, a semi, with a crawl space below the floorboards downstairs. The elderly couple next door weren’t too into maintaining their house and had a broken air brick on the side of the house at ground level. A house further along the road had been empty for a while and when builders started renovating it the resident rats needed a new home so found their way in through the neighbours’ broken air brick.

They accessed our house through the crawl space and chewed through the floorboards into the understairs cupboard. We had exterminators in and we also replaced the floorboards which dealt with the problem for a while but any rats still roaming around still had access through the neighbours house (who incidentally heard them running behind their kitchen unit plinths).

We went on holiday for two weeks, thinking that they’d been dealt with, only to come back to find the new floorboards had been gnawed through and some of our coats and shoes chewed and ruined.

Soon afterwards we solved the problem for good by doing a part exchange sale with a house builder.

Mice, rats, toads, bats, a squirrel, wasps, a ram (that only made it as far as the garden….DH herded him into next doors tennis court) and a Peacock.

Wait... a peacock? 😆

Oh, I forgot, I’ve also had a peacock in my house — the Manor House in the village had five or six, and they used to wandering around the village making mournful noises, especially as it was getting dark. One wandered in through an open side door and appeared to be watching TV.

Used to get birds in my parents house, jackdaws would fall done the chimney and land the kitchen, would shut the cats in another room, open the window did and herd it out with a broom. One got stuck behind a wardrobe once, i thought we had a poltergeist, i was home alone and the wardrobe was too heavy for me to move, i had to call my ex to come and help me.

We had mice in my old flat, lots of spiders; big ones. Had an infestation of flying ants once, it was horrible.

Had smaller spiders in the house, no rodents thankfully. Next doors cats have visited a few times, I'm pretty sure one wants to move in with us but our cat wouldn't like it. He is always in our garden and makes a beeline for the door if it is open, have had to put a zip up mesh on the back door to keep our cat in and him out.

Had a cat burglar once. We had gone on holiday and DD1 had left her window ajar and we came home to find it wide open. But the only thing missing was about £50's worth of prescription dry food for cats and the bag had been ripped open by the cat up the road.

However we get a load of wildlife in the garden
-countless birds including a family of woodpeckers in a hole in an apple tree
-foxes
-mice/rats/voles/watervoles
-badgers
-deer
-pheasants
-cranes
-owls
-lynx (only saw the tracks)
-plus a neighbour saw a wolf

• 4 abandoned cats

We had a 2 ft long snake slither into the playroom. We think it must have been a grass snake. We also had a lizard in the house for a few months one summer, he would move from room to room following the sun. My husband took a picture of the lizard sunbathing on his leg!

Frequently birds. They fly in an open door or window and twice they got stuck in a wood burner and had to be rescued
a mouse fell down the chimney and dropped into the wood basket it was running around frantically and thankfully could not escape, my husband rescued it and set it free at 5he end of the garden
wasp nest in the attic
swarm of bees

Slugs mainly in our new build style house. Some houses get nesting birds in the apex of the roof, but we've not yet had the noisy pleasure.

The house I grew up in had bats living in the roof, mice scurrying about in the eves, and garden wildlife visitors to rival Springwatch! The night time noises were...interesting.
Old houses in the countryside have a lot of character!

There was a sudden influx of mice in my flat last month after the building had pest control treatment outside (I think they were fleeing destroyed nests or something).

Dcat1 very helpfully dispatched them quickly and left them in a small neat pile next to the bin. Dcat2 got spooked and barely touched the floor for a week, traveling around the flat jumping from surface to surface.

I haven't seen any more since, and dcat2 is behaving normally again so I'm hoping it's over. Dcat1 seems annoyed her new game is gone, and is now hunting moths.

An owl! In my kitchen, perched on top of my fridge freezer. I'd got up and made a coffee to take back to bed, leaving the back door open for some fresh air. Drank coffee in bed, got up properly, went into kitchen ato make breakfast and there was the tawny owl. I was ASTONISHED.

Also forgot to mention one hot summer in the flat we had all the doors open and a neighbours dog decided to invite herself in.

A squirrel in the lounge one Christmas Day - I have no idea how it got in
Squirrels in the roof - made one hell of a noise, but no damage fortunately
A crow down the chimney - now that was interesting to come down to one morning
Rats in the garage - not nice, they chewed the seals of the freezer

Rats, possums, snake (courtesy of the cat), mice. More huntsman spiders than I care to count.

A badger! We think it was a young one as it came through the cat flap. Upended the bins in the kitchen then went up the stairs into my son’s room! He thought it was our cat until he turned his phone light on. My son said he didn’t know what to do so they stared at each other until the badger turned tail and ran off.

Snakes, spiders, cockroaches, centipedes, lizards, scorpions, frogs, birds, random cats, once a dog.

Ah thought you were talking about children 🤣

My cat used to bring snakes in, thankfully not dangerous, but awful nonetheless.

Due to owning cats and living in the countryside I’ve had basically everything in my house. From the snails that moved into the toaster! To neighbours sheep and cows with their cute calves. And even now I’ve got a teeny spider crawling over my glasses!!!! I seem to attract critters 🤷‍♀️

We think he had got into a delivery van wherever he came from and got a surprise when the doors opened again. Anyway he arrived one day, spent several days wandering around our gardens, sunning himself and making a lot of noise. He was obviously domesticated and on one occasion, feeling I was being watched, I looked up from my book to find him coming in the open french windows!