- Mar
- 3
Dealing Kindly With Insects
Posted by Ingrid Newkirk at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
The comedian George Carlin says that animal rights activists are the sort of people who would invent a cockroach spray that doesn’t kill cockroaches. It just fills them with self-doubt so that they have to go away and think about things.
. . .
Cockroaches can be a problem, even in the best of places. The ones in Florida are nearly the size of condors, but even they are rather intriguing if you can get over your prejudices and look at them without that theatrical shudder we think we are supposed to let loose. Their wings are quite delicate. Yes, the Florida ones can fly. But they are polite and shy and scuttle away into the drains, out of sight, if they can avoid you.
Of the more than 4,000 species of cockroach in the world, only a handful are considered “pests.” Among them are the European cockroaches and the German cockroaches who came to stay in my warehouse. I tried all sorts of “cures”: bay leaves, talking to them (something my friend swore worked for her when she did social work in a tenement in Maryland), but they had decided to populate the planet with their offspring, starting at my place, and wouldn’t listen.
I shall never forget the borax. That was a mistake. I hadn’t wanted to use an insecticide, a poison, and had taken bad advice to buy this instead. The 40,000 nerve endings in their antennae, their keen sense of smell (so keen that they can identify different people by body odor alone!), and the little ears on their rears, weren’t enough to warn the cockroaches away from the borax. They ate it and disintegrated slowly in front of me, no doubt in great pain as their small bodies burst asunder from some mysterious internal reaction. I felt hideously guilty, removed the refrigerator, forbade everyone from eating in the office (a cockroach can live for about a year on the carbs in a cracker crumb), and, in time, those who survived the hideous borax moved on to greener pastures.
. . .
Here’s how to deal with:
Ants
Pour a line of cream tartar, red chili powder, paprika, or dried peppermint at the place where ants enter the house - they won’t cross it. You can also try washing countertops, cabinets, and floors with equal parts of vinegar and water and putting a little paprika at the edges.
Some people swear by cinnamon oil, peppermint oil, mint oil, lavender oil, a mixture of olive oil and cayenne pepper, or catnip.
Moths
A humane and great smelling alternative to moth balls is to place cedar chips around clothes or store sachets made out of dried lavender or equal parts of dried rosemary and mint in drawers and closets.
Flies
To repel flies, hang clusters of cloves in a room, or leave an orange skin out. However, you may invite them back, as with ants, if you don’t keep living areas clean, sweep up crumbs promptly, vacuum, wash dishes right away, empty garbage promptly, and store food in tightly sealed containers.
Spiders
If you must evict them, carefully trap them in an inverted jar and release them outside.
Cockroaches
Place whole bay leaves in several places around infested rooms, including inside kitchen cabinets. Apparently bay leaves smell like dirty socks to cockroaches and they would rather not be around them. For serious infestations, you may need to resort to an insect growth regulator, called Gentrol, which nips the cockroach reproductive cycle in the bud leading them to produce sterile offspring. Given that one German cockroach mother and her offspring can add 35,000 new lives to the world in a year, birth control is a must.
Mosquitoes
Taking B-complex vitamins or eating brewer’s yeast daily (in tablets or powder) can keep you mosquito-bite free in the summer months. Oil of citronella and pennyroyal mint oil are both effective repellents when diluted with vodka or vegetable oil and dabbed onto the skin. Mosquitoes dislike fresh basil and pennyroyal so these can be usefully applied on porches and around the home.
-Excerpted from Making Kind Choices: Everyday Ways to Enhance Your Life and Avoid Cruelty to Animals
Posted to Home & Garden | Posted to Tags: Ingrid Newkirk, Insects
- Post this story to:
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Newsvine
More:
Phyllis says...
March 4th, 2009, 11:38 am
I love the bug catched I bought from PETA and use it a lot. It makes catching the bugs and getting them outside without hurting or touching them very easy. I can’t imagine it would work on ants though so this is good information to have, albeit information I hope I never need.
However…I do swat mosquitoes that land on me and I do use flea and tick killers. And if Count Dracula ever touches me, he’s gonna get it too!
Phyllis says...
March 4th, 2009, 11:38 am
I love the bug catcher I bought from PETA and use it a lot. It makes catching the bugs and getting them outside without hurting or touching them very easy. I can’t imagine it would work on ants though so this is good information to have, albeit information I hope I never need.
However…I do swat mosquitoes that land on me and I do use flea and tick killers. And if Count Dracula ever touches me, he’s gonna get it too!
Laura Lewis says...
March 5th, 2009, 5:37 pm
Awesome suggestions!!! Thanks.
Ann says...
March 6th, 2009, 3:34 pm
Great suggestions. Gaia’s creatures is what one of my acquaintances who moved to Puerto Rico called them. A few things - I know someone who used pennyroyal and ended up with all kind of burns on her hands. So handle things with care. Also please never injure a yellow bee or wasp they are good where as reducing and diverting red ones is important as they are not helpful to our current environment. Some people are saying moth balls are cancer causing. Also if you buy dry herbs esp from China they can have eggs for insects - and you can freeze them to reduce their ability to hatch (some may call this cruel but some would not…). Also using pathouli has been an age old way of preventing mold and insects…. Any problem with that?
Katherine D. says...
March 6th, 2009, 6:19 pm
i’m a peta member but we are doing ourselves and those we want to reach out to a disservice with some of these. they plain don’t work! example: we had an ant infestation in the summer - and i read here about the paprika, etc. guess what? the ants were COMPLETELY unfazed. walked right across it, didn’t care. that’s just one example. we look foolish when we dissemminate stuff like this - just plays into stereotype of touchy feely know-nothings.
Natalie says...
March 6th, 2009, 8:43 pm
I employ a vegan diet and put forth great effort to only purchase vegan products that aren’t tested on animals, including cosmetics, clothing, etc., yet I hate the feeling I get about cockroaches, fruit flies, and fleas. Fruit flies seem innocent enough, but what about fleas? Last year my baby (my rescued pit bull) got a horrible reoccurring case of fleas. I find that using the logic that I should kill them to spare my dog quite prejudiced to the vegan mindset. But honestly, I’m not going to care one once for these parasites who are putting my dog through misery, and I’ll wash them with flea killer not just to rid him of them, but to kill them. Who here would be interested in relocating the fleas to another host? Of course that would be ridiculous.
So then when I figure fleas are “bad”, it becomes pretty easy to extend the label to cockroaches, etc…… Thoughts?
maria says...
March 6th, 2009, 10:55 pm
for moths: does it work for all moths? tiny moths showed up (and now live with us) after holes were made in the walls to work on pipes.
does the dried rosemary and mint hurt : cats, dogs or ferrets?
Sidharth says...
March 7th, 2009, 2:50 am
thanks for these informative articles………….they would help us bring closer to animals and insects……carry on…….keep adding
Vanessa says...
March 7th, 2009, 11:35 pm
Thank you for these tips, I adore bugs and I just hate that people destroy them and use the most horrifically poisonous chemicals in their homes to do so.
For the most part, I just leave them be - especially spiders which are my absolute favourites! I don’t remove spiders unless they are in peril of being killed by the cats. I have noticed that I don’t have issues with other insects, like fruitflies, anymore and find lots of them in the spider webs around the house. I must have more than a dozen spiders around and never, ever been bitten by any of them.
If people just left spiders alone, they are the best pesticide you are ever going to have in your home.
Jen-X says...
March 9th, 2009, 10:50 am
I do have compassion for most insects and will gladly relocate a beetle or spider. However, I have lived in a place with an extreme cockroach infestation. And when I say extreme, I mean it; I’ll spare you the details. So suffice it to say, I am willing to used deadly measures to rid my house of them–same goes for flea infestations. Certain insects (ticks, cockroaches) may also harbor diseases, so I don’t mess around with them. Insects are great, but I have a right to live a healthy life too!
LiveVegan says...
March 10th, 2009, 12:12 am
Thank you for bringing attention to insects as beings who love life, and who need to be regarded, protected and cherished.
We are Buddhists and we do our best as Buddhists not to harm any living being. When walking around we are careful. We relocate spiders, mosquitoes, flies rather than harming them. We rescue them insects from puddles and other water sources. We do our best to prevent invasion by insects with non-lethal, non-harmful methods. We have found that the less aversion one has to insects, the less likely they will invade you. Here is an interesting talk by a Buddhist nun on this issue: http://www.lobsa.org/ABuddhistApproachtoMice.htm
Yavor Hadzhiev says...
March 10th, 2009, 5:29 am
I always try to check the washing machine for any flies, because they could have entered, before its turned on, and always try to keep it closed.
When I catch cockroaches I drop them in the nearby garden.
When I catch mice with a carton box, I do the same.
With spiders I do the same.
To keep ants out I think that when I throw rests of bread from our meals out side, that would keep them out.
About flies, when I see one I open the window and wait for it to go out then I quickly close it.
Theres alot of space outside for animals and probably if they come inside it is because they are short of supplies or flies get in when its raining so theres no thing to worry about.