Fly Swatter Effective Pest Control

FROM MY WINDOW

Fly Swatter Effective Pest Control

"Hey, look at that!" I turned to look out the window to see where my husband was pointing. He probably wanted me to see how nice the newly weeded flower beds looked from inside the house.

Promises of a July cool front had kept me postponing my yard work, but sure enough I stepped outside one morning to fine the anomaly had arrived. No more procrastinating. Well, maybe just one more cup of coffee. Oh, and is it my fault someone called just as I headed out the door?

OK. I was finally geared up for duty. Hat on. Ankles sprayed with insect repellant. Rubber clogs on instead of my usual flip flops. (My husband assures me when I wear flip flops across our yard, every tick and chigger in the area will attach to my feet, crawl up my legs and wreak havoc. My own concern is that I will step on a snake or a bee between the flip and the flop and the creature will be caught between by bare foot and my shoe...a no win situation all way 'round.)

I assessed the weeding situation. A survey of the flower bed is always necessary to get an overall view of the needful. A couple of well-planned snips. A few weeds removed. Review and assess again. (I used this protocol recently on my mother's flower beds which had gone a while without weeding due to my mother's aching parts. My sister was working on the project as well. After my painstaking attempts to achieve a certain "casually-artistic" balance, my sister came along with her hoe and chopped away everything in her path. I decided thereafter she should be in the lead.)

When doing yard work I always keep one eye out for poison ivy, one eye out for wasps and one eye out for the dreaded snake. (One eye is assigned double duty.) I am allergic to poison ivy and can break out in a rash if I get anywhere near the stuff. (The people who advise not scratching poison ivy blisters are the people who are not allergic to it. Not scratching is humanly impossible.) The poison ivy plants in our yard like to hide right next to the weeds. When you reach in to pull the weed, your nose immediately begins to itch. In a hurry, you grab the weed carelessly so that your gloved finger can hurry to rub your nose. Score a win for the poison ivy.

But I was still making good progress with my weeding when a wasp started dive bombing my head. I stopped trusting wasps when one flew up behind me and stung my elbow for no reason. This happened several years ago and in another state but I'm not above bearing a grudge. I went inside for my purple flyswatter. The wasp immediately hid. It was probably laughing at my flyswatter. I'm almost too embarrassed to have the swatter out in public. Purple should be reserved for royalty and dinosaurs; but my husband insists it was the only color left when I sent him...that is, when he volunteered to pick one up for me on a trip into town. I put the flyswatter in with my yard tools as a visible warning to the wasps and it seemed to do the trick.

That just leaves the snakes. I know they're in the flowerbeds watching me, probably just inches from my hand; but as long as I don't see them I'm content to let them stay there and keep the insect population under control. I have been on high snake alert since the recent morning when my husband stepped out the back door almost in the middle of a coiled, black snake...in the very spot my foot usually puts itself several times a day. My husband was agile enough to step over the angry snake, who about two feet long was trying to stretch him/herself into looking six feet. I'm sure my foot would have been paralyzed like in one of those bad dreams where you can't move. I am trying hard not to be such a ninny about snakes, at least the non-poisonous ones, but I was taught from an early age that snakes were the enemy by my mother when she chased one out of our house with a broom. It probably just came right back in when the hubbub died down and lay watching us with that snaky smirk common among smart aleck juvenile snakes. Anyway, I haven't learned to appreciate their "inner beauty," and don't you dare ever ask me to hold one to see how smooth it feels.

I finally finished my weeding and, as soon as my knees let me, rose and went in the house feeling I had made great progress. It was at this point my husband directed me to look at the flower bed I had just weeded. Crawling out of it was the dreaded snake. Apparently, purple flyswatters protect against snakes as well.

July 24, 2009