November 2008 / Vol.5 / Issue 11

Hello and Welcome to the November Greenpest News. Each month we aim to provide you with some useful information, keeping it short, sweet and pertinent.

Contents

1. Pest Talk - Geckos
2. Quick Installation Tip for DIY Customers
3. Spider Hoaxes.
4. Automatic DIY aerosols – Are they effective and are they safe?
5. Monthly Special.

Pest Talk

Geckos.

We are quite often asked if there is anything that can be used to kill or discourage the non-native geckos that are invading our homes.

For many people and not just conservationists, Geckos are a wonderful little inhabitant to have in their home.  They like them because they eat some of the pest insects that invade our homes and others simply like them because they are cute.

However some people have a serious dislike of the Geckos especially when their population becomes a little too large for comfort.  Their chirping sound is quite loud and though some may find it soothing many others find it downright annoying.  The other obvious problem is their droppings.  If you only have one or two Geckos you may not notice these small deposits, but once you have 40 or 50 geckos their droppings can very soon mount up.

Because geckos are not an insect, regular pest control (using insecticide) will not control them.  A poisoned bait will not work either because geckos like to catch their meals live.  So what is the solution?

We need only to look to some of our nearest neighbours to see that geckos have been a problem for many years in several south-east Asian countries.  Solution?  Scorpions like to eat geckos; so filling your house with scorpions works a treat.  We can provide you with a box of 50 scorpions for $100.  Just put them under your lounge furniture and in the end of your bed.  Obviously, you will need to remove them before going to sleep at night.

Some of you are probably thinking, "Surely he can’t be serious. He must be joking?" so I will confess (with a chuckle) that the answer is, wait for it… of course I am.

The actual solution, (no kidding this time) is to strategically place sticky flypaper in areas where the Geckos are known to frequent.  Attach the flypaper to vertical and horizontal surfaces around window frames, door frames, and inside wardrobes and cupboards where geckos tend to hunt for their food.  The other obvious place to use the sticky paper is wherever you see regular build-ups of their droppings.  A word of caution – the paper may damage the paint surface that you attach it to later on when you remove it, so test it somewhere inconspicuous first.

This method is quite laborious and you will need some patience.  Alternatively you have two other choices; learn to put up with them or I have some scorpions….

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Quick Installation Tip for DIY Customers

One of the many great features of the Green Termite Bait is its wedge shape because it allows you to simply whack them into the ground rather than having to dig a hole first which is the case with most other bait systems.  However, installing any termite bait into hard ground is quite difficult and simply trying to whack it in may damage the top of the bait.  Using a bigger sledgehammer is definitely not the solution; it will just wreck the bait.  Our practice is to loosen the soil first with an augur/post-hole digger.

In the DIY instruction manual, our installation section suggests using the wooden head of a mattock to drive the baits in.  Never use a hammer or a metal object as this will cause the top of the bait to deform out of shape and the specially designed seals built in underneath our windows (in the top) will no longer seal, which in turn will reduce the overall effectiveness of the termite bait.

If you don't have an augur/post-hole digger, simply dig a hole as best you can, then fill the hole back in with the soil you just dug out.  Now you can whack the bait in.  This is best practice because the bait should be firmly in the ground.  It may be tempting to place the bait in the hole you have just dug and then back fill the soil but we strongly suggest you avoid this procedure because the soil will not be compacted enough, even if you stomp around the bait.  Compaction is important because loose soil around the bait may lead to 2 problems:

• The bait may become loose and easily dislodged by pets, children, lawnmowers etc.
• Regular garden ants may be attracted to the loose soil as a great place to site a nest and we certainly don't want an ant nest beside the termite bait.

We would like to thank Zoltan Petri of Coast & Hunter Pest Control who wrote to us a little while back and offered the following suggestion:

"I suggest rather than a very rough idea of hammering the bait with a timber handle, simply do what I did: use an off-cut piece of softwood wider than the bait, and place it on top of the bait and hit it with a lumpy until it is deep enough - which is when the off-cut is about level with the ground - after loosening / excavating the soil (using a small post hole digger). Not one of the baits was deformed at all and all the tops fitted perfectly. It was much easier and looked more professional too. Spread the impact evenly - old engineering principle, you know."

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Hoaxes

Most people understand what a viral marketing is but for those of you who don't it is a way of marketing that simply involves motivating other people to pass your advertising message on.  For example, if this e-mail is of interest to you and I suggest that you pass it on your friends who may also find it of interest, and you do just that, and then they pass it on to their friends and so on, then I have achieved a successful viral marketing campaign.  If the message can genuinely help other people then viral marketing can be seen in a positive light.  However, as is often the case some good ideas are easily abused and misused.

A few months ago I was sent an e-mail about a highly poisonous spider that was purported to be found commonly on international aircraft flights.  The advice was to check under your seat before you sat down and forward the e-mail on to warn all your friends.  It sounded like a load of rubbish to me, so I checked it out and discovered that it really was a load of rubbish.  I replied to the good intentioned sender that they had been conned and I deleted the e-mail from my inbox.

Recently I received another e-mail about a poisonous spider and without paying too much attention I simply advised the sender (who was very concerned) that it was probably a hoax.  He was adamant that it wasn't a hoax and that he had been given it in a newsletter sent out by his local council.  The gist of my reply (two e-mails) was as follows:

Sorry, but I wouldn't assume the council are always correct.  It may simply be a misinformed but good intentioned council employee firing off a warning without checking the validity of the source.  If it is really true, it should make national news headlines.  Why not check with the AMA, Australian Medical Association?

Then this e-mail:

It is a hoax.

Further information. Have a look at this web site for your spider article:

http://www.avru.org/compendium/biogs/A000024b.htm

And

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/brown-recluse.html

If you scroll down on the page (above) you will note that it was updated in November this year.

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Automatic DIY aerosols – Are they effective and are they safe?

If you watch commercial TV it's very likely that you have noticed the ads that promote automatic insecticide aerosol dispensers marketed under the Mortein and Raid labels.  The idea for these products is not a new one.  Pest controllers have been using a product called Robocan for over 10 years. It is designed to do exactly the same thing, which is to release a micro-fine mist of insecticide into the air on a regular basis.  Timing might be every 15 minutes or every half an hour depending on how you set it.  We mainly used this product for the control of dust and paper mites in commercial offices.

Like all groundbreaking products when they are first released, it wasn't very cheap.  In fact it was down-right expensive, costing as much as $100-$150 for a single can and dispenser and then another $35 per can for refills.

It was interesting to note 12 months ago that Bunnings had bought large quantities of the Robocan product and the price had dropped substantially to about a 1/10 of what it was when it was first released.  Probably the patents ran out or it had been sold on to the likes of the big companies that manufacture Mortein and Raid.

We are all familiar with automatic perfume dispensers and they are fantastic if you like your house smelling a certain way 24/7.  Although the insecticides smell okay, the question you really need to ask yourself before using the product is… Are you comfortable breathing microscopic amounts of insecticide 24/7?  It may sound funny coming from a pest controller with over 20 years experience, but I'm not comfortable with that idea.  Then again, there are plenty of people in the world who don’t see a problem and will tolerate breathing microscopic amounts of poison every day.  These people are called smokers.  If you live in the heart of a major city that suffers from heavy pollution then you have no choice but to breathe a chemical cocktail every day.  In Japan’s big cities, many people wear a mask all day; in fact some of the masks are decorated in an effort to become a fashion item.  The downside of a mask is actually having to wear it, but the upside is that you can poke your tongue at the boss whenever you like.

Medical science clearly shows that the smaller the pollutant particle the greater the risk to your health because small particles have a greater ability to bypass the filters protecting our lungs and bloodstream.  We all breathe small amounts of pollution every day whether we like it or not.  That is simply a fact of modern living.  Just driving your car in traffic will do that but fortunately our bodies are pretty resilient and most of these toxins are filtered out on a daily basis.  Voluntarily sucking large volumes of poisonous air into one’s lungs in the form of cigarettes overloads the body’s natural filters and as we know dramatically increases the risk of health problems.

A micro-fine mist of insecticide might be safe to breathe on a 24/7 basis or for however many hours you spend in your home.  For me, fresh air is preferable.  There are less drastic ways to control most insects, such as an annual pest control, which doesn’t have any fumes once it’s done.

Of course the levels of micro-fine insecticide floating throughout your home will be dependent on how many automatic dispensers you are using and the frequency of the dispenser.  If you read the label you will discover that one dispenser will only cover a small cubic volume which equates to a small room.  So, to do your house fully (which is the only true way to achieve the high level of control that the ads promote on TV) you are going to need quite a few dispensers.  The only drawback with this is the cost; $100 - $200 depending on the size of your house.

If you are going on vacation for a couple of weeks, they are a great idea.

My advice to you if you like the idea of using these automatic dispensers on a daily basis is that you turn them on when you leave home for work and turn them off when you get back home.  This will rid your house of mosquitoes and flies and if you use enough of them it may even help to control bigger issues such as cockroaches, spiders and fleas.  Keep in mind that the mist is unlikely to reach into cupboards where cockroaches harbour so it may only work when the cockroaches come out at night.  Huntsman spiders tend to come in and run around like a terrorist for several hours as they search for prey and although the spray will kill them it will take a number of hours before they are dead.

Mosquitoes at night can be a problem, either because of their nasty bites or because of the annoying sound they make as they buzz around.  Many of us have tried the good old-fashioned mosquito coil but like the automatic aerosols there is an inherent (if only slight) health risk in breathing the fumes.  Talking about fumes, my wife bought a new laundry detergent the other day that promoted a lavender fragrance on the label yet the fine print advised to avoid breathing the fumes… hmmm.

Personally, I still prefer to spray the bedroom with regular low toxic fly spray a half-hour before going to bed.  By the time I go to bed the mozzies are dead and the spray has settled.  If I do hear a mosquito buzzing around during the night I simply reach for the fly spray, give it a squirt in the direction of the sound and then dive under the covers for a few minutes.  Of course, if I have forgotten to put the spray beside the bed I usually resort to the old-fashioned method of waiting for the mosquito to land on my ear and then I savagely slap myself on the side of the head.  If I miss the Houdini mosquito, then I'll try that method again a couple more times.  After a few attempts I am usually annoyed and awake enough to crawl out of bed and search the house from end to end trying to find where my (wonderful) wife tidied (tidied she says, hid I reckon) the fly spray this time…

Hmmm, maybe I will buy an automatic insecticide dispenser after all.

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Please share it.

Well, that's our newsletter for this month.  We hope you found it interesting.  If so, please forward it to your family, friends and work colleagues who may appreciate it also.  Thank you.

Monthly Special Promotion.

Pack of 50 deadly scorpions free with every...

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Christmas Promotion: Get at $20 Bunnings gift voucher with every order for DIY Termite Baits over the value of $200.

One voucher per customer only.

You MUST mention this newsletter to receive this promotion.
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Not to be used in conjunction with any other promotions.
Does NOT apply to other promotions.
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Promotion finishes December 24th 2008.

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The Greenpest News is Published by J & A Furnell Nominees P/L; Shop 23a Franklin Square, 60 Railway Street, Mudgeeraba, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of Jerry Furnell. The reader is encouraged to seek further information from appropriate government and statutory departments before taking any action based on this material alone.

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See you again next month.

Always... At your service,

Jerry Furnell
Green Pest Control & Green Termite Bait Systems.
Phone 1800 6 12345.

Copyright 2008 Green Termite Bait Systems & Green Pest Control. All rights reserved.

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