One of the biggest reasons that I home seal is to pass along education information – Knowledge is Power. This site is full of great information and can be used for all types of circumstances.
Basic House fly facts:
- Houseflies lived over 65 million years ago!
- The easiest and simplest way to keep flies out of your home is to keep things clean. Don’t leave food lying around, make sure you take out the trash every day and wipe up spilled messes right away.
- They prefer corners and edges or thin objects to rest on. Indoors, they rest on floors, walls and ceilings during the day.
- House flies are the most common of all flies and always found in the company of humans and are inactive at night.
- Houseflies have no mouth but it has an eating tube through which it vomits a drop of fluid from its stomach and deposits it on its intended meal – GROSS. This fluid is then sucked up along with the nutrients it has dissolved, leaving behind untold numbers of germs.
- Female houseflies can lay 2,500 eggs in just a month.
- Adult houseflies can live 30 – 60 days.
- Houseflies are a perfect host for all types of bacteria… proven carriers of such germs as gangrene, Typhoid, leprosy, tuberculosis, amoebic dysentery, bubonic plague, and listeria, just to name a few.
I’m truly amazed when it comes to what kids do, I think the biggest thing I ever remember doing as a kid was to push my curfew. Of course I was a great kid, just saying! But have you read about kids crushing up Bed Bugs and smoking them – well its all a hoax – Snopes.com. My first thought when I did hear this story on the radio was where are they getting all these Bed Bugs from?
Origins: April 2014 saw the proliferation of Internet accounts, based on a purported local television news spot from Phoenix station KNXV, reporting the latest alleged shocking schoolyard trend: kids smoking or injecting crushed bedbugs to get a cheap high from a hallucinogenic substance (PH-417) supposedly contained within those critters:
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/bedbugs.asp#H3eGijCxUuuLrwoB.99
The latest news story concerns “Beezin” teens supposedly slatering eyelids with Burt’s Bee lip balm to experience tingly high.”
Bed Bugs hiding under wallpaper
Origins: April 2014 saw the proliferation of Internet accounts, based on a purported local television news spot from Phoenix station KNXV, reporting the latest alleged shocking schoolyard trend: kids smoking or injecting crushed bedbugs to get a cheap high from a hallucinogenic substance (PH-417) supposedly contained within those critters:
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/bedbugs.asp#H3eGijCxUuuLrwoB.99
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/bedbugs.asp#H3eGijCxUuuLrwoB.99
Origins: April 2014 saw the proliferation of Internet accounts, based on a purported local television news spot from Phoenix station KNXV, reporting the latest alleged shocking schoolyard trend: kids smoking or injecting crushed bedbugs to get a cheap high from a hallucinogenic substance (PH-417) supposedly contained within those critters:
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/bedbugs.asp#H3eGijCxUuuLrwoB.99
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/parental/bedbugs.asp#H3eGijCxUuuLrwoB.99
Blending in, right?
Some flies have stripes, is it to blend in. I really thought that it was to blend in but I was wrong. Looks like the reason for their stripes has to do with warding off insects. “Why do Zebra’s have stripes? To keep the bugs off.”
flies PPMA
Have you seen those TV shows in the Arctic where the flying insects looked like there were zillions. The poor animals having to endure the biting and blood sucking pests. It is amazing to me to see that animals adapt to environments such as these. I have been camping many years ago and the mosquitoes would just drive you nuts, you couldn’t get away from them. I also remember canoeing down the Wekiva river and being attacked by deer flies and horseflies. Those bites really hurt. So it looks like all I had to do was paint myself black and white.
False Chinch Bugs
False Chinch bugs are in the Order Hemiptera also known as “true bugs”. False Chinch bugs prefer plants in the Mustard family and especially like London Rocket: a yellow flowered mustard that is very common in our area. Even though they may feed on some landscape plants, False Chinch bugs rarely cause significant damage. Usually the mass migration lasts only one week at most. Prevent entry into houses by making sure screens on windows and patio doors are intact and sealing up other entryways. Homeowners can apply a pesticide around the perimeter of the house to keep the bugs out, but the best approach is to seal them out.
How often do you think a new bug makes it to our shores? Have you ever thought how did that bug make it into the USA? Sometimes we make it easy for the bug to travel, like when you move from one state on the east coast to the west and you bring boxes which were in storage. We brought Mongoose to Hawaii for the rats and that didn’t work, nobody thought about the rat being nocturnal and the Mongoose is out during the day. Asian Tiger Mosquitoes (carries viruses like Dengue & West Nile) were accidentally introduced in tires brought in from China in 1985, the Black rat probably hitched a ride on early European ships, Asian Longhorned Beetle native to Asia and the Cotton Whitefly came from India.
Photo provided by PPMA
Thanks to all our Border Agents tasked with checking and rechecking all those shipments.
I like to spread information, it is important for us to get along with nature but occasionally nature attacks and leaves us no options. We have several pests that can be a real pain, like Bark Scorpions and Black Widow spiders and sometime even with home-sealing they can get into our homes. I’m a BIG believer in IPM or Integrated Pest Management and this can also be used outside the home. I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it, there is always an option to pesticides in your home, always. Some people say there is never a reason, but I’ve seen reasons why it might be important. Termites inside the home, even though the pesticide might be going into a wall void, German Roaches within a kitchen – not all of those over the counter things work.
I ran across this very informative E-book – “Beneficial Insects, Spiders and Other Mini-Creatures in Your Garden; Who They Are and How to Get Them to Stay” by Washington State University. IPM is an art, you can use all types of ways to prevent pests before getting to or using pesticides. Soap and water is another IPM, not a pesticide but very useful in getting rid of Aphids but also supplying Ladybugs to your plants may help get rid of those Aphids. Remember not all bugs are bad!
House spider photo by PPMA
One of my favorite calls relates to how scorpions get into bathrooms or showers. People tell me they come up drains and that is incorrect. Arizona Bark Scorpions enter your home by crawling up stucco and gaining access into your attic. They then crawl around and under the insulation and finally they come to a recess light or something that was cut through the ceiling drywall. See all those cracks and if your home isn’t sealed well enough they will fall right into your house. Sometimes there are lights or fans right above the bath or shower and they just fall in. So here is my advice, pull down the plate that covers these holes and caulk the hole. This should be done on the top floor ceiling or if you live in a single story house the ceiling. On our website is a list of things we attempt to seal when we perform a Home-Sealing.
“Family finds hundreds of potentially deadly spiders in pack of bananas.”
The arachnids may have been Brazilian wandering spiders, which have venom deadly enough to kill humans, but this has not yet been confirmed.
You know where I stand on spiders, but this would freak me out. This story was from Hednesford, England. I always check bananas when I buy them, but it just goes to show you – check your fruit and vegetables before taking them home.
Photo provided by PPMA
Here in Arizona we have a relative to the Brown Recluse spider – Arizona Brown spider. Take care their bite is dangerous, may kill living flesh and cause other debilitating illness.
Well it turns out that “Polar Vortex” may actually help to keep down the numbers of Stink bugs. I won’t make a snide remarks about the snow, it was like evry other day and yet another storm was dumping tons of snow in the north. I did appreciate all the FaceBook cartoons of snow, my favorite was “whose tired of the snow, and all you could see was hands sticking up through the snow mounds.
Just for the record I grew up in Ohio, so I know what snow is all about. I’m also very thankful having lived in Florida and now Arizona. “Polar Vortex may slow down Stink bug invasion, reasearchers say.”
Photo by J.Stoner