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Flies and crickets - tips and tricks??


bugsyburrell

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Now the flies and crickets are coming out to play again and after a day of proceeding to swallow a fly while laughing at a customers joke(quite embarrassing), then being kept awake half the night by Jiminy Cricket playing a tune from under the tumble dryer( he's still going strong!!) has anyone found something that truly works to help rid these pests??

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Please don't. There are many ways to control creepy crawlies without spraying nasty stuff everywhere. There are some great things you can do for little or no cost and with minimal environmental impact if you want to keep the bugs out.

 

I agree, we have been here 10 year and never sprayed a damn thing. The food chain (IMO) takes care of everything. Keep your place clean and tidy and you won't have any issues.

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We did spray but I did it myself. So much cheaper than getting someone in to do it. I was told to expect $250. Bought the sachets from Bunnings, mixed with water and sprayed it through a thing I wore on my back. I wore protective goggles, mask and gloves but it was nasty stuff. The label's small print was scary.

 

I have mixed feelings to be honest. I feel better because I can go out to the washing line late at night and feel pretty confident there aren't any red backs hanging around. Plus the cockroaches have touched it and died. I only put it around the entry to the house and under the eaves and by the washing line. However, I have seen harmless moths, stick insects and other things killed by it. I feel bad. The only way I can console myself is to say that insects are bred in vast numbers and that most of them are out in the bush/parks doing fine.

 

I found a stick insect that looked more like a praying mantis, this week. I was worried it would go in the barrier spray so picked him up in the dust pan and brush and took him to safety. Fascinating creature. Took loads of zoomed in pics of him. A wonder of nature when studied closely. Remarkable.

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Look, each to their own and yes my way isn't environmentally friendly, sorry. I am a very neat and tidy person so no mess outside or in. We didn't do aything last year as didn't see a thing but this year we were getting white tail spiders in our en-suite and lots of crickets outside and in the garage. Since we've had it done I've barely seen anything. On the day of spray they all came out. It was like something from a horror movie :shocked:

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I have a problem with ants had a problem with them last year also. But now they have moved from one side of kitchen window to the other. Again they have appeared in the en-suit I am afraid I have tried every product on the market also the home made paste of icing sugar bicarb etc nothing works I am going to resort to having to call someone out. I can cope with the odd cockroach on the floor outside and occasionally inside and spider here and there but the ants all over my kitchen work top is a big no no. No matter how clean I think I have cleaned the little blighters still come back. I think its going to be worse this year than last.

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Look, I didn't mean to start a war or make anyone feel bad, this is something I do feel very strongly about and of course I'm a hypocrite, I live in a modern world where it is impossible not to have negative impact on our environment but the mere fact that a liquid requires PPE and kills indiscriminately in seconds surely suggests it's worth investigating an alternative?

 

I think Plimthing and Arwen have very valid points, the balance is already provided by nature.

 

If you really do want to keep the creepy things out of your house then a lot of people say a chestnut in the corner of your room will keep the spiders out. I did this in London to great effect but there's not much scientific evidence to prove it. I've used clove oil here and our crevices are spider free.

For ants and just about any other insect I use Diatomaceous Earth or DE. Make sure you buy the organic, food grade stuff, not the chemical laced version you get for swimming pools. DE is a very fine powder, similar to talc but is formed from the fossilised bodies of diatoms, a prehistoric crustacean. Although it feels soft it's composed of very fine, fragments that have very sharp edges. These sharp edges score an insect's exoskeleton causing it to dehydrate. Insects just don't like it and won't walk across it so we just brush a little around skirting, cracks in the floorboards, doorways and, as we have a dog, scatter it through her bed.

Because insects don't like it they simply avoid it so it doesn't indiscriminately kill. It's completely harmless to us and the only precaution with it is to wear a particle mask while dusting with it simply because it's a very fine powder.

 

Obviously if you spread a thick blanket of it everywhere it will kill everything but using it wisely means it will control with minimal impact. We dust our dog off with it too and she's never had a flea since we did this.

 

Please give it a go folks.

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Guest Guest6235

I wasn't getting at you so much Porty, it was a point back at somebody last week that had a go at me for having an opinion, which I then had to bite my tongue. It seems if you express an opinion and somebody has different views you do get shot down. I don't mind if it's straight forward help about a move to oz or having banter on the forum but when it's people's personal views and opinions or just expressing what they're up to right now then I leave them to it, whether or not others think it's right or wrong.

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I wasn't getting at you so much Porty, it was a point back at somebody last week that had a go at me for having an opinion, which I then had to bite my tongue. It seems if you express an opinion and somebody has different views you do get shot down. I don't mind if it's straight forward help about a move to oz or having banter on the forum but when it's people's personal views and opinions or just expressing what they're up to right now then I leave them to it, whether or not others think it's right or wrong.

 

Sorry, Amigo, I forget that there are still a great many people in the UK and haven't acclimatised to Aussie parlance.

 

Beginning a sentence with the word 'look' in the UK can be seen as assertive, confrontational even. Here, saying 'look' when you start a sentence doesn't have the same connotation, it's far more chilled so I apologise, I didn't meant to suggest that you or anyone wasn't entitled to an opinion, I merely wanted to implore you all to try another way.

 

It's all good.

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I agree at @Shona7, it's all about opinions on here and everyone is different. Did you get your spraying done by somebody else or did you do it yourself?

 

We got a company in to do it for us. They also gave me a guarantee that if ants reappeared within 2 weeks I think it was, then they would come back and spray for free. They went straight after the initial spray.

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