BS: Natural Insect Repellents

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 03 May 13 - 12:53 PM

When my husband first arrived in UK he stared at me in astonishment as I gibbered and screeched while pointing at a spider in our sitting room. He picked it up (shudder!) and put it outside, obviously deciding I needed psychiatry. Yet I've seen very poisonous snakes, scorpions and huge monitor lizards at dangerously close quarters in Africa and been very interested and enchanted. Rats, bats, cockroaches, mice - sweet little things. I had a long grass snake in my garden that I called Hissing Sid. Nice chap. But don't suggest I try and 'put a cover over it and take it outside'. Or 'get therapy by gradually sitting closer and closer to one in a jar' etc. No. Think mad woman screaming her head off. Think fat old woman sprinting down the street whimpering. Think sobbing lady at 2am refusing to go to bed until The Thing is caught. That woman is me.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 May 13 - 01:44 PM

Yes, little kids are scary. They spread colds, usually have sticky hands and other nasty features.
The British upper class (old days) had the right ideas.
A nanny to take care of them and when old enough, send to a school as far away as possible. Not suitable for civilized society until mid-teens.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Megan L
Date: 03 May 13 - 03:16 PM

Weel lass since I got sacked frae ma last spider removal job I wid come ower but it might get a bit expensive.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 May 13 - 03:17 PM

Maybe a spider-hunting cat would be good, ...

A couple of our cats have hunted spiders with some success, but unlike certain classical musicians they seemed to learn fairly quickly that they don't taste very good and ceased noticing them.

While in Yuma AZ we were, like everyone else there, infested with what the locals called "earwigs." The two simonized cats we had then really loved them and never ceased hunting for them. The earwigs had a pair of "tail pincers" they'd use to grab the cat on the lower lip where the cat couldn't find them, and sometimes would ride around there for a full day while the cat kept searching for where they went. You'd have to see it happen to decide how funny it was - or wasn't.

A particular problem with these pests was that squashing one made the whole house smell like someone broke a rotten egg, so cats that thought they were a rare delicacy were sort of helpful. They didn't successfully eat a lot of them, but they never quit trying.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Alice
Date: 03 May 13 - 09:11 PM

Sticky traps - get the cardboard traps and put them along the baseboards of walls and in corners. Put them in shelves back against the wall where they will travel through.

If you want to save money, buy a can of sticky insect glue like for gardeners, and make your own cardboard sticky traps.

Vacuum everywhere in your house regularly, and keep down the population of bugs spiders feed on.

You can get the spider sticky traps in hardware stores or online.

Where I live, we have lots of different types of spiders, most not venomous. They especially like my basement.

Nothing I know of actually repels them, but the sticky traps collect them.

Hope that helps.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: ranger1
Date: 04 May 13 - 08:25 AM

Alice, she's not going near them live or dead. It's a real phobia, not just a dislike or general fear.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 May 13 - 01:18 PM

Psychiatric treatment suggested.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Megan L
Date: 04 May 13 - 01:45 PM

Most people have something they are afraid of even if they don't admit it. Mind you there are some posters do seem to have a phobia to compassion.

found this on another site I used a similar thing for mice in my last house

High Tech Answer

There are plug-in devices that create a "barrier" in your walls and emit a high-pitched tone that bugs run from. They sell at Sam's Club for $20 for a package of 3; I've also seen them at Walmart.com! They work! I hate spiders and our new house was loaded with them until I got these. It took about a month to get rid of them all, but I saw an improvement almost immediately. Or, you could buy a few frogs.
Mae

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: mayomick
Date: 05 May 13 - 06:53 AM

Feel for you Eliza and Becca, but it really is the phobia that's the problem not the little spider .Acclimatization does work . Instead of having it in the house overnight , try giving the spider in the glass jar to a friend to keep at the bottom of the garden and go visit her once a week .After a while try to visit her and the spider twice a week.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 05 May 13 - 07:18 AM

I'd second the 'eliminate clutter' so you can see and clean everywhere, and not feel haunted.

I had a kitchen ant invasion this week and remembered they won't cross over cinnamon, so I did my semi-annual cinnamon dump; just a thin, even line along windowsills and the counters everywhere they might travel towards food. I scrape it into the corners with a dough scraper. You can see them get confused, and then turn back ; )

BIg jar's cheap at Costco. It's worth a shot to see if spiders hate it, too. Nice side-effect is the aromatherapy. If it works, you can figure out how to blow some up in the corners.

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: ranger1
Date: 05 May 13 - 09:22 AM

Dani, wish I'd known about the cinnamon thing a while back! I had an ant issue, little buggers were everywhere in the kitchen, even after washing everything down repeatedly with soapy water. Then there was a massive swarm, I screamed, sprayed them all down with soapy water, cleaned up the little corpses, and haven't seen any since. But cinnamon as a preventative seems much nicer...

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 May 13 - 12:58 PM

It has been indicated that it's not just the spiders but also the spider webs that are annoying. A number of "dusters" are advertised as being great for "sweeping down" the webs, but some webs are incredibly sticky and if the duster pushes little bits against the ceiling or wall the bits sometimes stick to the wall better than to any duster and can be very difficult to remove.

The most reliable method for removing the webs is still a good tank-style vacuum cleaner. Since most homes will have occasion to clean up "wet stuff" one with liquid suckup is recommended.

Most of these come with about a four foot long flexible hose, and with a couple of rigid three foot long "extension tubes." You should be able to easily get additional extension tubes for most popular "shop vacuum" types, although different brands use different diameters so you have to be careful to get the right ones.

The four foot flexible hose should be sufficient to permit "pointing" an extension tube of any length desired, and with four 3' extensions you needn't get closer than 12 feet from the web.

When you suck a few webs when the spider is at home, you will observe that spiders are of an advanced species capable of an ability we humans have not yet learned, called "hyperspace transport" and when the spider sees it's web being attacked quite frequently the spider will be there one instant, and mysteriously will have transported itself to some unknown dimension and is simply "no longer there" in our dimensions.

As spider culture has been so petty as to have never revealed to us their secret of hyperdimensional transport, we can only trust the spiders to know where they wanted to go, or how they did it. We are entitled to believe that they went to a place they choose with the belief that it was more appropriate for their happiness at the time.

It might be noted that the appearance of new spiders for no discernible reason and from unknown places is absolute proof that spiders use the same hyperdimensional transport both to come and to go. It's a mystery we do not understand, and for most of us there is little profit in worrying much about it.

There are those who display the attitude that "every spider must be protected," and while casual harm to innocent species is not something to be admired, this is a claim often used merely as a pretense which those with hidden agendas pretend to observe when it suits their purposes. It must be suspected that those who are "overprotective" of spiders simply hope that they may be the first to whom the spiders will reveal their strange hyperdimensional transport ability, and quite likely those people should be suspected of nefarious plans to use the "spidee powers" for their own domination of human culture and all of the entire natural world.

Disbelievers should try to "suck a web" and observe whether or not the spider in one demostrates the indicated "here one instant" and mysteriously "somewhere else" in the next. It has always worked when I tried it. And the opposite action, in which a new web with a new spider reappears after a short time and mysteriously "in an instant" has also demonstrated that the ability is something under the voluntary control of the spiders.

It is perhaps the "secretive" nature of spiders that causes them to conceal what could be of immense benefit to us if they'd just speak out, that is one basis for our common arachnophobia. Attempts to explore whether this is the case have, for me, been unproductive, as I've spent some time (when I was young and had the energy) talking to a couple of spiders of apparently normal spider intelligence, and found them simply belligerently unresponsive. Obviously they know the value of their secrets.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Megan L
Date: 05 May 13 - 01:16 PM

I remembered seeing a spiders web robe on television some time ago found this article about it. a useful spider (DO NOT go below her ankles on the second set of pictures they h

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: ranger1
Date: 05 May 13 - 02:09 PM

Megan was trying to give warning about spider photos after the second set of pics.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 05 May 13 - 02:20 PM

Last year our nice neighbour cut down a large, thick hedge. That night the poor homeless spiders that used to live in it thought that by creeping through our open bedroom window they might find a new home. There were FIVE enormous ones up near the ceiling, and I screamed the place down. My husband is kind and gentle, and he put them outside at the back of the house one after the other, but I had to sleep with the light on for the rest of the night, constantly scanning the room for any more refugees. I honestly don't wish them to be killed, just removed to a distance of about a mile. I can't even bear to look at a photo of a spider.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Megan L
Date: 05 May 13 - 02:20 PM

Thanks lass and sorry folks I was rushing to get the door and never notice it had run out of space

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Alice
Date: 05 May 13 - 07:32 PM

You don't have to go near the spiders to use the sticky traps. Have someone else dispose of them after they are dead in the traps. They do work. I'm serious. I have a phobia about snakes. My son has a phobia about spiders. I am the one who takes care of the spider problem.


Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Becca72
Date: 06 May 13 - 09:09 AM

Megan,
Thanks for the sonic gadget idea. I often wondered if they actually worked. That might be the best solution for me so long as it doesn't bother the cats.

Speaking of cats, my beautiful Sheldon caught and ate his first spider (he's 7)...and then coughed and gagged and hacked for about 10 minutes afterward so I am discouraging him from doing it again.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 06 May 13 - 10:58 AM

My three Siamese look at me with total lack of interest if I screech, point and indicate that they should grab the nasty spider. As they're of tropical origin, I wonder if they're genetically programmed not to touch spiders, which might be venomous in their land of origin. Yet they used to torment poor Hissing Sid mercilessly by poking him with an outstretched paw. He hissed and curled up under a raised pot on the patio, and they'd spend the afternoon prodding him now and then just to wind him up. I had to hold him behind his head hissing like anything, take the tail in my other hand and put him safely in the bank at the bottom of the garden. He was about 5ft long, but I never minded. I've had British cats too, and they weren't interested in spiders either! Only my husband comes willingly to my rescue, bless him.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 May 13 - 01:25 PM

Diatomaceous earth works like the cinnamon to keep ants out of an area. Dribbling a line, or puffing a thin dusting will work. I sometimes run a fine dusting of it around my kitchen waste bowl in the corner of a counter to keep a line of ants from being attracted it it.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Alice
Date: 06 May 13 - 01:34 PM

I bought the sonic plug ins that claimed to repel spiders. They didn't work. Waste of money. Spend the money on sticky traps instead.

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Alice
Date: 06 May 13 - 01:37 PM

The sticky traps catch the bugs spiders are feeding on, too, so they work well in keeping their food source down.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Becca72
Date: 06 May 13 - 01:52 PM

The spiders in my house hang out 98% of the time on the ceiling or in the high corners near the ceiling. There is no way for me to put a sticky trap there. I also don't want to dispose of them. Anything left down low the cats will get into.
There are no spider webs to be found and I have not seen any other bugs at all; whatever they are feeding on is tiny or keeps hidden.

Subject: RE: BS: Natural Insect Repellents
From: Megan L
Date: 06 May 13 - 02:12 PM

I don't know about the insect frequency ones but the one we had for mice did not upset Cookie our cat who was to much of a wimp to hunt anything. Honestly if there was an Olympic medal for cowardice she would have won gold