Page 269 of 314

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 1:31 pm
by Dave
Bookworm wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:12 am
Catawampus wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 5:57 am Just remember that it can take the fleas over a day to actually drown in the water; often the "dead" fleas in water will revive after you've poured them out. So be sure to kill the carcasses extra dead.
Flush them :)
Won't that annoy the alligators in the sewers?

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2019 1:16 am
by Bookworm
Dave wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 1:31 pm
Bookworm wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:12 am
Catawampus wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 5:57 am Just remember that it can take the fleas over a day to actually drown in the water; often the "dead" fleas in water will revive after you've poured them out. So be sure to kill the carcasses extra dead.
Flush them :)
Won't that annoy the alligators in the sewers?
No, our alligators live in the bayous and drainage ditches behind subdivisions.

The sad part? The way the law is written, even if one broke into your kitchen and is trying to eat your daughter? if you kill it, you _will_ go to jail and be fined.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2019 4:29 am
by Alkarii
Well, good news on the bedbug front: I cleaned up most of my room and went all around the mattress with the spray that kills adults and eggs AFTER passing the flame from a Bic lighter over the nesting areas and anything that looked alive. Later today, we're gonna yank out my bed and burn it, then once I'm done cleaning the last couple areas of my room, I'm gonna use the shop vac I bought a few weeks ago to vaccuum out the carpet of any debris, then shampoo the whole carpet. Once it dries, I'm sprinkling the DE all around the room and where I'm putting my cot. Though, I'm going to have to put my 9mm and my .45 in my car for a few hours without the shade up so as to bake any bugs that may have hidden in them somewhere.

Which also reminds me, I finally got to shoot my C308. It has a solid kick, considerably more than the AR-10, and the steel casings I had used where thrown a good way, the farthest landing probably 20 feet away from where I had been kneeling. It isn't a bad rifle, but not as good as an AR-10.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2019 8:29 pm
by Bookworm
Remember, if they're in one room, they can be in other rooms as well.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 8:50 am
by Alkarii
Yeah, I'd seen a couple in the bathroom. I think, though, once we get them out of the bedrooms, we can use a combination of the spray and some DE to keep them out. Although, we also have textured walls, so maybe we can dust the walls with that stuff, if it's light enough to not fall off when applied thick enough to be effective.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 9:27 am
by Dave
Bookworm wrote: Sun Jul 28, 2019 1:16 am The sad part? The way the law is written, even if one broke into your kitchen and is trying to eat your daughter? if you kill it, you _will_ go to jail and be fined.
Hmmph. I had thought that the Texas version of the Castle Doctrine would apply in that case, but the way those statues are written, they apply only to a person who is committing a crime of violence against you. An attack by an alligator wouldn't apply.

I suppose you could lobby for a change which would recognize alligators as legal individuals (call the Alligator Liberation Front for advice on lobbying?) so that alligator attacks would qualify as attempted murder, and the Castle Doctrine would apply. However, that would mean that the alligator's relatives could sue you in civil court for wrongful death, and that would leave you in an environment populated by lawyers.

So, maybe not much of an improvement on the current situation.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 4:15 pm
by Atomic
Bah. Bed bug infestations are more proof the DDT ban was overreaction.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:51 pm
by Alkarii
Well, after passing a lighter over the visible nests on my mattress and then spraying, I've only seen two bugs actually on my bed, and both times pillows had been touching the walls (one of the bugs had been on the pillow, and my cat brought it to my attention). I haven't seen any since the early hours of Monday morning at the latest, so I probably don't have very many left in my room at all. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna stop spraying or put down any DE, though.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:11 pm
by Dave
Atomic wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 4:15 pm Bah. Bed bug infestations are more proof the DDT ban was overreaction.
Why do you say that?

The current rash (heh) of bed bug infestations is driven largely by the fact that bed bugs have adapted/evolved resistance to a lot of insecticides. I have no reason to believe that the same thing wouldn't have happened, if exterminators had continued using DDT.

Now, careful and selective use of DDT (e.g. cautious, limited spraying of indoor surfaces) does still seem to have a useful role...

... but there are a lot of species of birds which survive today, and which likely would have been extinct by now if the previous patterns of DDT use (wide-scale outdoor spraying) had continued.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:02 pm
by Catawampus
Dave wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 1:31 pm
Bookworm wrote: Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:12 am Flush them :)
Won't that annoy the alligators in the sewers?
Nah, they'll just hybridise. Leaping lizards!

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:53 am
by Atomic
Dave wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:11 pm Now, careful and selective use of DDT (e.g. cautious, limited spraying of indoor surfaces) does still seem to have a useful role...
Exactly. Interior and other specialized uses could have mostly eradicated malaria, and was doing so at the time it was banned for all uses. Baby v bathwater. Even thalidomide, horror that it was in the wrong circumstances, still is valuable in some specific, narrow cases. DDT as an all purpose insecticide was much too much. I remember as a kid watching (and smelling) the mosquito fogger trucks going about. Legitimate target, wrong method. Malaria was being conquered by interior wall spraying, because that's where the anopheles mosquitoes rested. Clothing, rug, and bedding treatments for bedbugs would be simple and keep DDT out of the Great Outdoors food chain. Yes, eventually resistances would develop, but in the meantime you have a safe and effective treatment.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:07 am
by Warrl
The current rash (heh) of bed bug infestations is driven largely by the fact that bed bugs have adapted/evolved resistance to a lot of insecticides. I have no reason to believe that the same thing wouldn't have happened, if exterminators had continued using DDT.
I once read (can't find it again, or any confirmation) that in NYC there was actually a new species of cockroach. Defined as: it couldn't reproduce by mating with the common species. Why it couldn't: it had so adapted to DDT that it was not merely resistant to the stuff, but dependent on it. Without DDT it couldn't reproduce. And the DDT would kill the common species.

But with the ban, it's believed that this species is extinct.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:09 pm
by Bookworm
DDT, to me, has two specific locations where it would be beneficial.

In attics, and under houses. Both areas where animals are not wanted to be nesting anyway, and there is little to no weather movement.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:13 pm
by Alkarii
Well, I'll have plenty of time to do more cleaning next Monday and Tuesday, as I'll have those two days off, and once I get that done, I can haul my mattress set outside and light them on fire, then use the cot and surround it with DE.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2019 2:45 pm
by TazManiac
Somewhere in here we are going to have to.... wait, let me just take care of this now:

MuHahahahahah!

Image

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:49 pm
by TazManiac
OK, first off- Sorry, I didn't spend enough time looking for a better (& smaller) Mad Scientist picture.

That said, I just came across an ad for this stuff:

https://www.zevoinsect.com/pages/how-ze ... prays-work

Zevo Insect Spray. I'm still investigating, but it might be worth a look...

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2019 8:52 pm
by Dave
TazManiac wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:49 pm Zevo Insect Spray. I'm still investigating, but it might be worth a look...
There are wasp-killing sprays that are basically mint oil in soapy water, in a CO2-pressurized spray can. They work pretty well... effective knock-down and they disable the wasps quickly.

Orange oil is an effective ant repellant. When my future wife's rental house in Venice (California, not Italy) suffered from an any invasion, I showed her how to block the inside entry points with some squeezed orange peel... it stopped the ant army in the spot. Professionals are now using orange oil as a termite killer and repellant.

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 8:24 pm
by TazManiac
So. since we are talking about bugs n' stuff, here is a Wired magazine article that Firefox web browser thought I might find interesting:

https://www.wired.com/story/a-crashed-i ... ket-newtab

A Crashed Israeli Lunar Lander Spilled Tardigrades on the Moon

Just in case it's not immediately recognizable exactly what one is (A Tardigrade that is), here is a very very magnified picture of one:

Image

Mmmmm, yummy...

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 8:57 pm
by jwhouk
So that's where Discovery got the one for their spore drive...

Re: More Stuff

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 4:45 am
by GlytchMeister
TazManiac wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 8:24 pm So. since we are talking about bugs n' stuff, here is a Wired magazine article that Firefox web browser thought I might find interesting:

https://www.wired.com/story/a-crashed-i ... ket-newtab

A Crashed Israeli Lunar Lander Spilled Tardigrades on the Moon

Just in case it's not immediately recognizable exactly what one is (A Tardigrade that is), here is a very very magnified picture of one:

Image

Mmmmm, yummy...
I imagine NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer is probably utterly livid with Israel’s Lunar program right now...