How To Manage Home Pests We all dislike insects getting into the house, do we not? But I do not like squashing the ones that do get in either. However, I reside in northern Thailand, 100 metres from thousands of acres of wet rice fields. The farmers spray their land with pesticide to decrease the number of insects, but inevitably there are still rather a lot here, especially in the two monsoon seasons. Therefore, we have had to fortify our home and ourselves against insects, mostly of the flying kind, but not all of which sting by any means. In the monsoon seasons, which are roughly May to June and August to September, the foremost culprit is the mosquito. There is no malaria where I am, but they are still not nice. Simultaneous with the mosquitoes are the midges, but they are not nearly so many. While it is not raining, the common household fly is a nuisance. You simply are not able to teach a housefly not to sit on you or your food, I have attempted it many times. The lessons almost always result in the death of the student by corporal punishment. On some rainy days hordes of other types of flies will hatch out within hours - you can see swarms of them coming out of the ground like bees, but they are more similar to lace wings. In fact, they are termites They are completely harmless, to humans but they get in your hair and everywhere else. Then there are a few varieties of fly that consume rice or humans if they are in the way, but they appear to favour rice. The first thing we did was have fly screens fitted into our windows. That helped a lot, but everybody kept leaving the doors ajar. Then we had screens fitted into the door frames. That truly was good for everything except midges and baby mosquitoes that seem to be squirming through the mesh. We solved that issue by spraying the mesh with permethrin once each few months. I am fairly certain that no insects get into our household via that path any more. However, a number of insects were crawling in under the doors, because there were no thresholds or draft-excludes - a draft in Thailand usually being more than welcome. So, I fitted draft-excludes to the doors. That blocked the scorpions, spiders, millipedes, centipedes and beetles, although some spiders appear to abseil down from the attic into our living quarters. I do not mind spiders too much as long as I do not see them, because I know that we have a common enemy, to wit flies. Household flies still come in sometimes, particularly while visitors and their kids are around. However, the kind of spiders we have most of, do not seem to make webs. They stalk their prey and then jump on them; and they are very fast.
Despite that, we spray the floors and the tops of the walls with permethrin every month or two as well. This keeps the ants from entering the home via the attic and clears up any crawling insects that have gotten in via an open door. Another important entry point into your home for pests is your pets. You have to take care of your cats and dogs. Brush them frequently, fit a collar which has been soaked in insecticide, bathe them in insecticidal shampoo and dust them with flea powder. Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with the Dust Mite Pillow Cover.. If you would like to know more, go over to our website at Bed Infestation.