Halloween scare

[JohnRoberts]

I have been doing this for several years and it works great! Of course new mounds pop up every now and then but this stuff lasts years for a small bottle........




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXHU80WPzoY

Thanx I'll check it out

My favorite was the guy who poured molten aluminum down an ant mound and then when it cooled he dug up this huge artistic looking sculpture...

I understand urinating on the ant mound can disrupt them... I have too many nearby neighbors to do that.

They often have long connected underground passages so knocking down one mound means they can sometimes pop up from another hole. Rain storms are good to get them to reveal their locations. 

I manage to kill all I see and new colonies can start from ants floating down my rain ditches, and ants also come in from the road, when they fall off of logging trucks, or crawl across the street... ants like higher ground to avoid flooding so hang out around trees and road shoulders, etc.

it's like trying to stop the tide... you can push them back for a while, but they always return.

for a fast knock down, pouring gasoline down a mound will get them to leave pretty damn fast, but I have heard of red necks burning down their own house with that strategy...(hey hold my beer and watch this.  :  ).

I do not like the idea of pouring gasoline around my yard but have used it a few times when I needed to move around some dirt the ants thought was theirs, and I couldn't wait the several days for ant bait/poison to work..

I really hate fire ants.... 

JR

 

[Gold]

My car battery went dead almost a month ago. The electrical system in my aging car is starting to misbehave. Lights are staying on that shouldn't. I don't use the car much in town. I mostly use it to go out of town. It was sitting idle for a few weeks. I have a jumper battery pack but of course it is upstate. So I called my insurance company to give me a jump.

I opened up the hood and saw a bunch of plastic bags on the battery with some fur sticking out. Hmmm. I got a shovel thinking it was a dead rat. To my surprise a small opossum scampered away when met with a shovel. I then put on some gloves and cleaned out the nest.

 

[bluebird]

Yikes! that's creepy, I can't stand opossums...What is it? A mix of  rat, cat, mole, dog, squirrel, rabbit...weird creatures.

 

[Gold]

Opossums are the only marsupial in North America.

 

[JohnRoberts]

My car battery went dead almost a month ago. The electrical system in my aging car is starting to misbehave. Lights are staying on that shouldn't. I don't use the car much in town. I mostly use it to go out of town. It was sitting idle for a few weeks. I have a jumper battery pack but of course it is upstate. So I called my insurance company to give me a jump.

I opened up the hood and saw a bunch of plastic bags on the battery with some fur sticking out. Hmmm. I got a shovel thinking it was a dead rat. To my surprise a small opossum scampered away when met with a shovel. I then put on some gloves and cleaned out the nest.

Usually you find them after you start your engine and hear the screams when they hit the fan. In winter months critters crawl up there for the engine warmth.

JR

 

[mattiasNYC]

are you confusing DDT with Thalidomide (taken by pregnant women)?

50 years ago Rachel Carson wrote her "Silent Spring" book scaring people from using DDT.  Since then untold millions have suffered from malaria when those mosquitoes were not effectively controlled.  Of course DDT was a miracle insecticide used around WWII, by the 60s some mosquitoes had already grown resistant to it (nature is funny that way).

Shouldn't put DDT in our food , but I am not aware of any children missing limbs from it ever.  Of course it is a severe insect poison so in excess it can interfere with human systems too.

JR

I think you're right,  I mistook it for something else.

That said, Wiki tells me a sustained indirect exposure increases the risk of spontaneous abortion. So "no limbs". But then again, my comment doesn't literally make sense in that case.

Can we at least all agree though that spiders are like, the worst?

 

[scott2000]

Can we at least all agree though that spiders are like, the worst?

As long as roaches are in there too..... eeeewwww

 

[Gold]

In the NE United States there aren't many dangerous spiders. The ones that are dangerous live in places you are not likey to run across. The spiders you see eat  insects that bite. I like them. I find spider webs very pretty. Especially in the morning dew or on the rain.

 

[bluebird]

Usually you find them after you start your engine and hear the screams when they hit the fan.

Good lord JR, that's horrible

 

[Gene Pink]

Good lord JR, that's horrible

It gets worse.

In the winter, stray cats like warm motors at night. Happened to me, well, happened to them, a few times over the years, until I learned to "bump" the starter to run them off before starting the car. It is funny when this makes them jump 5 feet straight up off the motor, forgetting about the hood just 6" above them. Headroom problem?

I have yet to see blood on the fan, always on a pulley.

That's enough about that.

I had a rat nest under the hood of a seldom used International stepvan, chewed clean through a major wiring harness, and in International's infinite wisdom, every damn wire was green, and the same size. They were numbered on the ends, but not in the middle. That took a while to sort out.

Gene

 

[JohnRoberts]

Good lord JR, that's horrible

Real life is not kind to dumb animals and people....

JR

PS: My neighbor has too many cats and since they are territorial they spread out... almost always one trying to claim my property as his...  Muddy cat prints all over my car, with skid marks down the back window... One time over a year ago there was blood on my hood and fender, where a cat had dragged an even dumber animal it killed.

 

[nielsk]

I think a little diligent research will reveal the reason for banning DDT, the danger massive extermination of many species  of bird by the thinning of their eggshells.
If you really want a Halloween scare, just consider the thousands of chemicals used in industry that have not even been evaluated for possible dangers, and the list grows daily. I am much more afraid of the poisons than the critters...
I absolutely hate fire ants (a perfect example of unregulated commerce causing massive environmental damage, there were no fire ants in the USA before the 20's when they were imported by careless banana transportation and now are spread across the entire southern USA)

I have a simple rule: If it is actively trying to bite me (mosquito, fire ant, hornet, and so on) I kill it if it is my house, if not I catch it and relocate it outside.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I think a little diligent research will reveal the reason for banning DDT, the danger massive extermination of many species  of bird by the thinning of their eggshells.

Yes, that was the premise behind Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", one of several predicted global catastrophes that didn't pan out over the decades.  There are always tradeoffs, and DDT is still in use in some regions as a lesser evil than malaria spread by mosquitos.

If you really want a Halloween scare, just consider the thousands of chemicals used in industry that have not even been evaluated for possible dangers, and the list grows daily. I am much more afraid of the poisons than the critters...

Yes, I doubt my roach spray is healthful for humans, but roaches (palmetto bugs) grow as big as small birds in the south... not like the cute tiny german cockroaches up north.

I do worry about the collapsing bee colonies, the finger pointing at some chemicals does not seem definitively proved (yet), but this could be a real problem. Our food supply depends on bee pollination. When did science get so squishy? They are almost making economists seem decisive.

I absolutely hate fire ants (a perfect example of unregulated commerce causing massive environmental damage, there were no fire ants in the USA before the 20's when they were imported by careless banana transportation and now are spread across the entire southern USA)

Apparently came in from soil used in ship ballasts.... not the first or last example. Many aquatic species get here in ships water ballast tanks.

I have a simple rule: If it is actively trying to bite me (mosquito, fire ant, hornet, and so on) I kill it if it is my house, if not I catch it and relocate it outside.

I have a simple rule, if it doesn't pay rent it goes...  I recall as a kid being stung by stepping bare footed on already dead wasps, so even dead insects get removed with extreme prejudice.

JR

PS: I don't want to get the global warming crowd excited, but I heard rumors that monarch butterfly migration this year is stuck in the north due to unseasonably warm weather (not today).

 

[mattiasNYC]

As long as roaches are in there too..... eeeewwww

Yes. I agree.

 

[bluebird]

Ok here's one... Back when I lived in Ohio, I had a bunch of stoner friends who's mom fed her 6 cats (along with all the neighborhood  feral cats) outside with a large plastic dishpan full of cat food on the back porch.
The coons and possums would regularly dip out of the free food and my friends would chase them away with BB guns. Then one day someone came up with the brilliant idea to lace the cat food with antifreeze...So they rounded up all the house cats and left a full pan of antifreeze saturated cat food out over night.

Well that seemed to solve the coon and possum problem for almost a week when a giant half dead possum's butt fell through the bathroom ceiling. They actually had to pull it by the tail hissing and gasping to get it out and into a garbage can.

Then the real horror started. All over the house we were hearing thumps and scratches in the walls. Then the smell. For at least a year that house smelled like rotting animals and Nag Champa incense. Who knows how many dead carcasses where in the walls and attic.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I had a squirrel try to set up residence in my attic... (I heard him scratching around up there).  The hole that he got in through was pretty small, but squirrels are like that...

I eventually chased him out, reportedly moth balls will discourage them from staying so I used them and other strategies. After he was gone for sure I sealed up his entrance.

Poisoning critters with them living inside you house may not end well... as evidenced by your stoner neighbors.

The more common unintended consequence of putting out antifreeze is killing neighbor's pets..... 

Even I wouldn't do that.  8)

JR

 

[PRR]

I learned to pound on the hood of my Falcon before I started it. Cats.

Got a new toolbox. Got a stink in it. Finally found a dead mouse in the slider. Musta seemed cozy. Now it stinks of mothballs. Haven't had a mouse since, but I dunno.

Hey! I got a recipe for fried possum: link.

 

[Tubetec]

years ago I had a rat living in the attic  , I wasnt believed when I said we had an infestation in the house , anyway sure enough the creatures droppings turned up in the airing cuppord , my mom set about clearing out the press and was confronted by a small female rat ,she screamed and slammed the door shut just as the rat jumped down ,she trapped its tail under the door as she closed it , rat had already nested and given birth in the hot press. The rat chewed its tail off and escaped into the trunking . Anyway I sent my mom away for a day or two so I could deal with it . I set up my monitors and loads of traps along its run ,i played it big cat calls ,lions tigers bobcats mountain lions all that kind of thing as loud as the monitors would go , the poor creature was so terrified it killed its own young and subsequently got caught in a trap .Cruelest thing I ever did to an animal in my life ,but you cant share your residence with rodents or they'll destroy the place. I kept setting traps in the compost bin in the garden afterwards and caught another 3-4 females ,finally I was left with the daddy rat ,he was clever ,he knew how to remove the food from the trap without getting caught , so I attached two rat traps to a piece of wood in such a way that one trap being set off triggered the other ,I covered the trap in a thin layer of tissue paper and put some oat flakes with star anise added on top . The star anise spice is a great attractant to our furry friends ,sure enough next day there was the king rat with a broken back ,at least twice the size of the females and balls nearly as big as mine . I had found a document entitled 'full revelations of a professional rat catcher' heres the link ,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17243/17243-h/17243-h.htm%23startoftext
If anyone has an infestation to deal with or just wants to learn more about our furry friends habbits and mans relationship to them I'd highly recommend you read this . It gives a fascinating insight ,happy hunting folks .