Sunday, May 24, 2009

Homemade Pest Control

Pest Control has been a concern of mine for awhile. Actually, since we have become homeowners....we have had to make decisions on how to control pests around and in the home. We had a pest control service when we first moved here. We had built our new house almost five years ago, and the fear of a fertile cockroach coming in the door was more than we could bear.

    The pest control service that I hired swore up and down that it was “organic”, but when I pressed the issue, that wasn’t necessarily true. Supposedly you could drink the stuff and it would not hurt you, but inside my stomach churned every time they came. So, I dropped the service. I then went to www.arbico.com to find organic pest control devices that I could use around the home. I tried several of their products for various things, but just recently, I realized I have the WINNING combination. Are you ready?

    O.K. The one thing we have had a lot of issue with are scorpions. This was a pet peave of mine because I would call the pest control, they would fluff white powder all between rocks outside and in the attic, and then another scorpion would show up. The powder they were using, I had already gotten from arbico.com. It was diatomaceous earth and I knew how cheap it was. When the rubber hit the road, my main issue I knew the answer for, but I was calling someone out to fluff the cheap powder and paying them to do it.

    So, the first summer on my own, I put a little line of powder around the whole circumference of the house. Actually, it was a big fat wad and drove Mark nuts. I also sprayed orange oil under the doormats. Year number two of Rachel’s pest control, I did the same things. Year number three...I got lazy and did nothing. I started noticing spiders and creepy crawlies and got a late start, but JUST powdered around the perimeter of the house in late May. I also did a little D.E. (diatomaceous earth) behind beds and toilets in a couple of rooms where I kept seeing spiders.

    Well, Spring is in the air and I have just realized that we have not had one bug in or around our home for a year. The little spiders, earwigs, and non-harmfuls that had crept up are gone. THEN, it came to me...it’s working! Rachel’s pest control is actually working!! The only bug we deal with now are silverfish and they are isolated to certain rooms. The reason for the picture of the new bag of D.E. above is I realized the silverfish are living in rooms or bathrooms that I haven’t put the D.E. in, either under the countertops or behind the toilets. The last note on DE is we have DE in our pool closet for the pool. I went to Arbico.com to read up on silverfish one more time before deciding what to do and they specified that the “pool” DE is harmful to pets, whereas, the Safer DE or food grade DE you can actually feed your pets who have parasites and it will kill the parasites, but not harm the pets. So, we got a fresh bag from Lowes which will last a couple of years. Now, I cannot quite stop the blog here. We have had a couple of pests along the way and I want to share what I did. 

    Birds. The swallows that like to make a nest on the side of your house??? Not cute. Those were persistent fellows too. You have to be more persistent than them and every time you see them smack mud on the side of your house, grab your garden hose and squirt them down. I did this for 2 weeks last summer. It was the first “encounter” I had had with swallows and after seeing a friend’s porch...I am SO GLAD I stuck with it.

    Mice. We have not had a problem at the house, but when we lived in the apartment, there was some sort of hole, and one mouse after another would enter the hole, get stuck to the glue trap, and get thrown out. Then, the cycle started again. Finally, out of desperation, the apartment office went to Walgreens and got some of those things you plug in the wall. They make a high pitched sound that humans can’t hear, but apparently, mice can. Sure enough, that was that! We never had a mouse again. I brought those plug in deals to our new home and plugged them into a couple of key outlets. And we have only spied evidence of one mouse. It was in the garage closet and there were droppings, so I went and bought a couple more of the plug in deals. Well, I never did actually SEE the mouse, just wondered if it was there. We just cleaned our garage closet 100 percent through and through and I found where it was living and everything, but the mouse had hit the road, jack.

    Ants. O.K., this blog is going to be a little long, but I need to cover all of the bases, what if YOU had one of these issues? WE don’t want extra money leaving your house unnecessarily. Once, we had a trail of ants in the front. They liked a pot on the front porch and I think they were making a colony in the bottom or something. I personally HATE fire ants with all of my heart and will do anything necessary to exterminate them. I tried our homegrown products, squirting them...all sorts of things...and it seemed to be a temporary fix. Finally, I doused the marching line of ants with D.E., and it was about 48 hours and they packed their bags and headed for the neighbors house or something, because they were gone. The next summer, another trail headed straight for the front door, came IN the door, and were headed down one wall of the INTERIOR of the house. A little more trusting of the D.E., I gently made a tiny line of it with a spoon and covered their trail going all along the wall of the house with D.E. and along the edge of the doorway. 24 hours later...gone

    Wasps. This one was kind of weird. Everyone gets a wasp nest or two. I had a whole case of very expensive organic wasp nest killer on hand and it worked well. I used it for 3 or 4 summers with no extra problems. Last year, I relaxed about them, and casually sprayed them. But I noticed when we swam in the pool, that our house or property had been totally invaded by wasps and they would dip down in swarms of 8 or 9 wasps every 5 minutes for a drink in the pool. Time for backup reinforcement!! I got really busy and got some extra hard core chemical spray...first. Then, I started looking for the nests. I found them around the perimeter of the house (6 or 7 of them), but then I found HUGE nests in the trees surrounding the house. We sprayed them, knocked them down, and then I started seeing them swarming the chimney and that was IT. I called out the professionals because Mark said I wasn’t allowed to climb on the roof. Also, by this time, I was feeling a little panicky since we could not go outside without wasps diving us. The pro’s came out and I showed them where I had squirted nests and then I showed them the chimney. They said that wasps like electrical (climbing in and out of outdoor lights), and they like chimneys, but they rarely make nests in either. They also said I had gotten every nest around the house...good job...call us if you hear bees in the walls. No charge.

After that point, the wasps did quiet down, although, he said the MINUTE you see them start a nest, spray it.

    I think that’s the end of my pest expertise. If you see a varmit, shoot it!

    

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