PEST CONTROL

Pest

by David Nuttle

In my work over the years, worldwide, I learned a few effective means to control pests that may be if interest to you. To wit:

To prevent most mosquito bites, take a daily Vitamin B-12. This will also deter bites from other insects like bed bugs.

Aggressive action should not be used to remove leeches. Gently move them to one side to prevent them from unloading stomachs into their bite causing infections.

Ticks may be removed from most areas by using a small tub filled with dry ice and covered with a thick white felt fabric to absorb CO2 from the melting dry ice. The felt needs to touch the ground on two ends. Place this is your yard or other area where you seek to remove any ticks. Since tick's hunt by CO2 detection, any ticks there will be attracted to the felt having a CO2 smell, and crawl onto the felt. Typically, you will have over 100 ticks on your felt in one days' time for a few days. The best means of disposal is to burn the felt along with ticks.

I helped a few Boy Scout Troops clear wooded camping areas of ticks. Using three of the above-described CO2 tubs, they would collect over 600 ticks per day for 2-days.

In Africa, do as the Africans do by burning a clump of myrrh resin outside on a rock on a day with minimal wind. Let the oily myrrh smoke, while burning, cover your clothing and exposed body parts. Nothing will bite you until after you take a shower or bath and change clothes.

If you find yourself in a jungle with Cobra snakes, do not rest or sleep on the ground at night. Cobras hunt at night and when night temperatures drop, Cobras like to snuggle with you to keep warm. They make angry partners, so I consider them a pest!

Cimarroncita Girl Scout Ranch asked for my help in controlling several black bears raiding their kitchen at night and removing food scraps from trash containers. I had a large steel drum made with loading door for adding food scraps, some straw, and a little water each day. Using railroad ties I had a work crew make a 2-rail track with side and end blocks so the drum could be rolled up and down the track without moving off the track. The bears worked each night to roll this drum up and down the level track. This effort by the bears kept them busy each night and they no longer forced entry into the camp's kitchen, and they could no longer get at the food scraps. All the work they did made a good garden compost.

I lived and worked in several areas with poor and food insecure populations who would steel food crops if hungry enough. They were "pests." To solve this problem, I always had a large garden and a flock of laying hens for eggs. I would invite the poorest of the poor to visit me weekly for a gift of produce and eggs.

During my national development & security survey for Peru, I had a trainee, Robert, who was learning such survey methods. We were traveling and camping out at high altitude often in cold and rain. For a break and to dry for a night, we rented a room at a fleabag hotel in Puno, Peru near Lake Titicaca. We "crashed" for the night, and I had a sound sleep except for hearing periodic moans from Robert in an adjoining bed. The next morning, I noticed that Robert had dozens of red bite marks all over his exposed body parts. We then pulled back the old blanket on his bed and saw hundreds of bed bugs all over his bed. I did not have a single bit mark, but when I uncovered my bed there were about the same number of bed bugs in the bed I had slept in. At this point, Robert decided he should have been taking the Vitamin B-12 tablets I had given him.

At times, learning has to come the hard way!!!