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Today's due diligence
On 9/5/2017 7:33 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
On 9/5/2017 5:02 PM, Muggles wrote: On 9/5/2017 11:25 AM, George Shirley wrote: On 9/5/2017 10:43 AM, Derald wrote: George Shirley wrote: Those of you out there that don't have fire ants consider yourselves blessed. We're in the progress of pouring boiling water down our biggest pest in the gardens home. Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*I've dealt with fire ants for 40+ years; good luck with that hot water down the hole bs.Â* Just as with ground-nesting wasps, gasoline and fire work well but, unlike the wasps, surviving ants will re-establish nets elsewhere.Â* In 20 years of "due diligence" at this place, I've got them down to a few small outbreaks each year.Â* Of course, since this land was "cleared" 60-70 years ago, it may be that nesting sites (decaying subterranean wood, e.g. tree roots) have diminished but I credit Amdro, IME, the only ant specific insecticide that works on them. Amdro is "fire and specific" only because many other types of ants won't eat the bait but those that do die.Â* Like the boiling water, any other product that I've tried simply disperses them, resulting in a host of satellite mounds, often at significant distance from the original problem site.Â* They're a major pain but at least they're more easily controlled than grasshoppers and locusts. Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Having said that, I must confess that a fragment of the familiar colony persists (and has done for years) in and under the timber retaining walls of one garden bed and I have the scars to prove it.Â* I don't use any "chemicals" in the garden and I know of no predators or pathology that'll take the little *******s out so I just deal with ****ed off ants injecting fire into my feet and lower legs several times each year.Â* I can't guess whether or for how long the toxin remains in an AWG's body but I'm sure to be loaded.Â* It is possible to use the ants' behavior pattern and tribal reaction to threats to minimize the damage to ones self but I'm not telling. I was raised in Orange County, Texas, where so it is said, that foreign fire ants first came ashore. They finally found us after several years at the old home place, right after I got out of the USN and married, about 1961 if memory, very old memory, works. Here we have five feet of gumbo clay under two inches of sand for our front and back yards. The fire ants come up sporadically in the spring, usually by our raised bed gardens. Right where, if you're working the garden, you get bitten. Don't want the amdro or other things there as the plants pick it up too. The boiling water, two pots full, are to kill the queens, generally the rest of the ants, less queens, generally just die off as I have seen before. Now we're waiting for two things, if the ants all die we got the queens; if they start moving out, they've still got at least one queen and they're all moving next door. Suits me. Our poor dog has been covered up with fleas this summer.Â* We've treated the yard where she roams, treated her with Advantax several times, and evidently it has quit working altogether.Â* Next, we tried flea baths with a flea collar, and no luck, either.Â* She ended up scratching and biting herself so much she has very little fur on her tail, butt, and parts of her legs.Â* We finally called the vet. He had a stronger flea killer that is a pill. One was to kill all the fleas on her in 24 hours, and the other is one pill a month. We have 3 months worth of it. Our son suggested we bath her in dawn dish soap because it is gentle and also kills fleas, so he did that this past Saturday.Â* He also suggested we put out bowls of dawn water around the house as a trap for any indoor fleas.Â* Speaking of which, we also treated the indoors for fleas too. A week later from her original vet treatment, I don't see any fleas on her body now, just the occasionally one that gets on her paws when being outside.Â* Evidently, the indoor treatment is working, too, because we've caught some fleas in the bowls, but really not too many. Initially, we caught like 4 or 5 fleas in different parts of the house, and now we're only catching 1 or 2 new fleas a day. The vet said that everyone is having horrible problems with fleas around here.Â* We didn't have much of a cold winter last year, so I guess that's why.Â* Is anyone else having flea problems? Â* It's been a bad summer for fleas and ticks both out here in The Holler . I use frontline plus on Max , he still has a few fleas but not nearly as bad as it could be . I spray his blanket (actually a handmade afghan but I won't tell if you don't ...) regularly to keep it from getting infested . Our house doesn't have carpet for them to hide in , a bonus . Â* -- Â* Snag Our ten year old Rat Terrier has never had fleas or ticks, she has been on a regime of flea and tick medication the first of each month all her life. She cleans her front feet often and also her back end when she's been out. I guess it's because she has short legs, was supposed to be a miniature ratty, but has the body of a regular rat terrier on short legs. Vets look at her and shake their heads. We don't have carpets other than our "Persian" carpets we bought during our five years in the Middle East. The dog knows which she can lay on, the cheap ones. G The dog and I sleep under an Afghan blanket, made by my elder sister who crocheted all the time and is now long gone. It's light, keeps us warm when the AC is on, and we put a real blanket under it in the winter. Dog let me sleep until nearly 7 am this morning, that's a first. Wife is still snoring and the dog is napping on the couch behind my office chair. The dog used to snore but the vet fixed that. I'm thinking of taking my wife to that vet too. George |
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