Our cottage is in the mid-Atlantic on a wooded lot. In the summer there are bugs. In the autumn spiders sometimes try to get inside. Our place is named Firefly Cottage for a reason.
We have monthly treatment of the grounds during mosquito season. We treat the house regularly (professionally) for ants, flies, ticks and any other pests (I have only seen ants, but when we bought the place there was a dead mouse behind the fridge. It had been vacant for some time so not totally unexpected. Still, eeek!) We also stay there once a month ourselves, using the outdoor spaces so we are very familiar with how "buggy" it is or isn't. All guests are provided with insect repellant-- two kinds, two strengths. We point out where this is in the house guide but one bottle still sits in plastic and the other looks to have about a teaspoon used from it in the last year.
Every so often we get a guest who "can't tolerate insects." I do wonder why they would book a place such as ours. Not to pick on my California or West Coast pals, but they are typically hailing from such places. The last straw was a guest who drew us some pictures of how to enclose our very pretty porch so that she could sit outside but actually BE inside. We have no plans to do such a thing. I mean, she is welcome to buy it from us and do her remodels, but wow.
I grew up in a similar environment to our cottage but it had a lot of insect issues. I don't think our place is "buggy" by comparison and we do out best to keep it managed. I do think that some guests are very sensitive to this and not well suited to a booking such as ours in high summer. Has anyone come up with a creative way to address this? I don't want to give the impression that we are awash in creepy crawlies, but hey, bugs happen.
