The Vent and Rant Thread

[Cinisajoy]

I found the culprit as to why the ants were invading.
That darn domestic engineer needs to learn to sweep out from the under the island more often.
The problem is the DE keeps getting lost at MR on her way to the kitchen.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Just plain old baking soda? I can easily sprinkle that around the back door.
Oh and note to self: keep track of your potato peels.

For regular ants yes. You have to make a wall of it. They won't travel past it. I use my dustpan to do this. You will need to clean up their trail. Any cleaner will work. Just wipe everywhere they were. It can take a day or so before they stop trying. I guess they don't have internet so news travels slower.

Diatomaceous Earth Food Grade is another sure method of getting rid of them. Hubby says it cruel. I disagree. You just sprinkle like the baking soda and the food grade version is pet friendly. No need to make walls with it.


Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[cromag]

A few years ago I discovered Terro brand ant poison. It's a solution of borax in a sweet liquid. I get it at the local Home Depot, but it's also at Amazon (of course). I buy the liquid and put a few drops in some bottle caps for the ants to find. A day or two later there are a lot of ants around the baits, then ... none. Sometimes there's a second "surge" but it also ends.

The poison works slowly enough that they take plenty "home" for the queen.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Blossom

For regular ants yes. You have to make a wall of it. They won't travel past it. I use my dustpan to do this. You will need to clean up their trail. Any cleaner will work. Just wipe everywhere they were. It can take a day or so before they stop trying. I guess they don't have internet so news travels slower.

Diatomaceous Earth Food Grade is another sure method of getting rid of them. Hubby says it cruel. I disagree. You just sprinkle like the baking soda and the food grade version is pet friendly. No need to make walls with it.


Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Dumb question:

Isn't it true that insects don't have pain receptors? I'm not into cruel, at all, but I also feel icky about making bugs suffer. However, I could SWEAR that I read something legitimate--not "the Internet," whatever that is--about insects not having pain/suffering receptors.

Do we have a resident Master of Bugs? (Wait--it's gonna be Dennis, you just wait and see...)

Hitch

[Cinisajoy]

I know I'm no expert but I think I read the same thing.

[cromag]

They avoid unpleasant stimuli, so they have to have something analogous to the sensation of pain/unpleasantness.

But, I have to admit I have a somewhat practical (convenient) approach to insects in my home or immediate environment. I spend time outdoors most days and I squash mosquitoes with reckless abandon.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Dumb question:

Isn't it true that insects don't have pain receptors? I'm not into cruel, at all, but I also feel icky about making bugs suffer. However, I could SWEAR that I read something legitimate--not "the Internet," whatever that is--about insects not having pain/suffering receptors.

Do we have a resident Master of Bugs? (Wait--it's gonna be Dennis, you just wait and see...)

The bugs I might be called Master of are all the computer variety.

A chap I knew long ago mounted insects on pins, and they were still alive when he did so. He said "They have no nerves". As it happens, they do, but not like ours. Vertebrate nervous systems are of a different order than those in phylum Arthropoda. There's a discussion of the topic on Wikipedia - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_invertebrates.

The short form is that pain is an emotional response to a stimulus, and to feel pain you must be capable of receiving the stimulus and feeling emotion. Neither is true for insects.

I have an ongoing war against bugs. I live in an older building in NYC. Older buildings have mice and cockroaches. (We also had a plague of tiny flies that apparently lived in the older pipes, and finally went away when a very old section of pipe in the basement that was the breeding ground was replaced.)

Glue traps do for the mice. I haven't seen cockroaches in a while, but roach traps were scattered all over at one point. (And an old friend who was a sculptor said that clay dust scattered around base boards was a good roach control. They breathe through the equivalent of gills, and the dust coated them when they walked through it, so they asphyxiated.)

I do still see giant waterbugs, that look like cockroaches on steroids, and get called "Steroids" here in consequence. Insecticide is our friend. (My SO was dismayed to discover they flew, which they did when hit with Raid.) Does it hurt them? I doubt it, but I frankly don't care. They are pests I want gone.

Back when our late cat Bugsy was still alive, he was a champion mouser, and helped keep us (and several other tenants in my building) mouse free. Did he hurt them? Likely. Did I care? No. He would proudly bring us his catches, and we would praise him and dispose of the corpses. (He normally did not eat them. The exceptions were when he brought them to us and they were still alive and got away from him. Then, he ate them, in an apparent case of "You're not getting away from me this time, you little @#$%!! I'm going to eat you!") Glue traps don't hurt them, but they'll starve to death. I generally put one caught in a glue trap in a bag and step on it to give it a quick death before putting it in the trash.

If there were a way of getting rid of such things without killing them, I might be receptive. Since there isn't, I'll settle for death as a permanent solution. (And solutions that didn't kill them would simply drive them away and make them someone else's problem. No, that's not more moral.)

I'm not into cruelty, and won't deliberately cause things unneeded pain and suffering. For things like insects and mice, I will kill them as quickly and expeditiously as possible. Folks squeamish about that are invited to get infested by them and see how long they continue to feel that way.

(BTW, you've got email.)
______
Dennis

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The bugs I might be called Master of are all the computer variety.
<snip>
I'm not into cruelty, and won't deliberately cause things unneeded pain and suffering. For things like insects and mice, I will kill them as quickly and expeditiously as possible. Folks squeamish about that are invited to get infested by them and see how long they continue to feel that way.

Having lived in NYC (mostly Brooklyn) for 5 years, I can attest to the joy of the NYC cockroach. Ultimately, I developed a foolproof and reliable method to clear my apartment of them. (I even wrote it up as a paper for a technical writing class.) That methodology worked in Brooklyn Heights, in Park Slope,in the lower East Side, and in Tribeca, at both my own apartments, and at friend's. BUT, it required a three phase approach using highly toxic chemicals (some of which have probably been banned by now) and a VERY thorough cleanup after to avoid exposure to those chemicals. And it only worked for as long as it took for the nests in other apartments in the building to migrate into yours again - usually about 12 months. Though in the free-standing house in Brooklyn Heights, where I had access to all three apartments, we were roach free for the remaining two years I was there.

I would add that there's nothing quite like walking back into an apartment after phase 2 and finding thousands of dead cockroaches all over everything.

[RyanP]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Glue traps do for the mice.

Glue traps don't hurt them, but they'll starve to death. I generally put one caught in a glue trap in a bag and step on it to give it a quick death before putting it in the trash.

I'm not into cruelty, and won't deliberately cause things unneeded pain and suffering. For things like insects and mice, I will kill them as quickly and expeditiously as possible. Folks squeamish about that are invited to get infested by them and see how long they continue to feel that way.

Emphasis in bold, that is a very ironic thing to say considering you're using glue traps.

Glue traps don't hurt them? Animals will rip or pull parts of themselves off those glue traps, they're even known to bite their own legs off to escape. They're banned in many places and the HS and RSPCA are pushing for a ban in the UK. You can see that their limbs are dislocated from struggling, bloody noses and limbs from ripping off skin or biting the trapped limb, etc.

If you're not into cruelty and deliberately causing things unneeded pain, then why on earth are you using a glue trap instead of a quick-killing trap? They're barbaric torture devices and ought to be outlawed. A glue trap should be the last thing you use if you don't wish to cause unnecessary suffering.

Watch the video link, then tell me you don't cause unneeded pain and suffering with a straight face.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by RyanP

Emphasis in bold, that is a very ironic thing to say considering you're using glue traps.

Glue traps don't hurt them? Animals will rip or pull parts of themselves off those glue traps, they're even known to bite their own legs off to escape.

Mice caught that way here tend to be discovered quickly and dispatched well before they reach the "chew off a limb to escape" state. It will happen almost as fast as a quick kill trap.

I'll look for the quick kill traps. The glue traps are supplied by the exterminator my building contracts with.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by CRussel

I would add that there's nothing quite like walking back into an apartment after phase 2 and finding thousands of dead cockroaches all over everything.

<chuckle>

A former girlfriend had been a zookeeper before I met her. She described going into the basement where the monkey biscuits were stored, turning on the light, and watching the walls move. Cockroaches loved monkey biscuits.

But then, the monkeys loved cockroaches. They were tasty snacks to be consumed with the biscuits.

I did at one point consider getting an Indian house gecko as a natural pest control method, but that would introduce other complications.
______
Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

<chuckle>

A former girlfriend had been a zookeeper before I met her. She described going into the basement where the monkey biscuits were stored, turning on the light, and watching the walls move. Cockroaches loved monkey biscuits.

But then, the monkeys loved cockroaches. They were tasty snacks to be consumed with the biscuits.

I did at one point consider getting an Indian house gecko as a natural pest control method, but that would introduce other complications.
______
Dennis

The barking would drive me bonkers. It's absolutely true, if you've been to the tropics, that geckos are the cats of their own areas, but...man, can they bloody BARK!

(Not to kibitz, but if you could find something OTHER than glue paper...I had a neighbor that used it--and then would call ME to come over and dispose of the snakes she'd trapped...it was horrible. )

Hitch

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

The barking would drive me bonkers. It's absolutely true, if you've been to the tropics, that geckos are the cats of their own areas, but...man, can they bloody BARK!

The good part is they're insectivores, and love to eat bugs. But the barking would be an issue, and NYC isn't exactly gecko climate.

(Not to kibitz, but if you could find something OTHER than glue paper...I had a neighbor that used it--and then would call ME to come over and dispose of the snakes she'd trapped...it was horrible. )

The Victor Quick Kill traps look like a decent option. The glue traps are what the exterminator under contract to my building supplies. (And are preferable to the old style mouse traps, where the challenge is cocking them and placing them without trapping a finger. The mice often prove adept at getting the bait without setting off the trap, too.).

While I suppose they'd work, glue traps aren't what I'd use to control snakes. I'd hire a pro.

(A former co-worker once worked in a pet store. He talked about the fact that they sold rabbits, and he'd sometimes come in in the morning to discover he had less than when he locked up the previous night. He finally realized he knew what had become of the python that had gone walkabout some time previously. It had found a hole in the wall to slither into, emerging when it wanted a meal. He was able to locate the hole and retrieve the snake, and place it in a tank it couldn't get out of this time... )
_____
Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The good part is they're insectivores, and love to eat bugs. But the barking would be an issue, and NYC isn't exactly gecko climate.

True, that. And yes--I had a friend that lives on the island one over from Guadeloupe--can never remember the damn name--and she has a gecko for this very purpose, wild-ass bug control. While most of her neighbors hear that horrid "cockroach slither" at night--she doesn't. She feels that the barking is a small price to pay. We have to have professional pest control here, for termites. Constantly. And ladies and gents, lemme tell you--ain't cheap. Thousands per year. {sigh}

The Victor Quick Kill traps look like a decent option. The glue traps are what the exterminator under contract to my building supplies. (And are preferable to the old style mouse traps, where the challenge is cocking them and placing them without trapping a finger. The mice often prove adept at getting the bait without setting off the trap, too.).

Yes. When we were building the house in Wyoming, those small field mice (unlike NY mice by a factor of 50% and then some) would try to smuggle their relatives across the border nightly. Major hassle. As nobody was living there full-time, a cat was not an option. Traps were the only option while someone was there, and it's true that they are remarkable at figuring out how to get the bait, and NOT get caught.

While I suppose they'd work, glue traps aren't what I'd use to control snakes. I'd hire a pro.

I don't actually believe that there is any type of prophylactic snake-exterminating that can be done, and when you live where we do, getting a pro to come out and dispose of a snake you've caught...well, it's beyond "pricey." You can, if you have time, etc., free a snake from a glueboard with oil, which is what I'd do. Otherwise, she'd throw the poor creature into her TRASH bin (the outdoor one that the trash contractor picks up), and let him SIT there, stuck to the glue board, for, what, weeks? While the snake--which can live remarkably long sans sustenance--would suffer? No, no...horrid.

(A former co-worker once worked in a pet store. He talked about the fact that they sold rabbits, and he'd sometimes come in in the morning to discover he had less than when he locked up the previous night. He finally realized he knew what had become of the python that had gone walkabout some time previously. It had found a hole in the wall to slither into, emerging when it wanted a meal. He was able to locate the hole and retrieve the snake, and place it in a tank it couldn't get out of this time... )
_____
Dennis

Oh, dear. I had a King snake that escaped from his terrarium, when I was a teen. My dad had a THING about snakes, and I'm not sure he spoke to me for months. We never did find him, mind you...although, this was another very rural home, that had garter snakes a plenty (they'd get into the house all the time. I was the designated garter snake catcher and releaser), mice everywhere (cats thought that they were in Kitty Heaven), etc. It's true that we did see a remarkable decrease in the mouse population for a year or so while he must have grown into his more-adult size and shape, and then he seemed to move on. Eventually, my Dad started speaking to me again.



Hitch

[cromag]

I found a small snake (I think it was a De Kay's brown snake -- definitely not a garter snake) in the garage a few days ago. Since I could not state with absolute certainty that the snake had left the premises it appears that I am the only person who will be using the garage ... forever.

I use glue boards in the basement to control camelback crickets -- there's really no other alternative but poison, and that's not something I intend to do. Over the years I have gotten an occasional mouse (white footed mice or deer mice, not the little gray house mice). I check the traps frequently and when I have a mouse I drown it in a bucket of water.