EMERGENCY LIVING – Sanitation – Critter Control
If a disaster happened where you, your family, and possibly your town were without garbage collection or adequate toilet capabilities, what would you do?
In my Blog series related to EMERGENCY LIVING I hope to address steps you can take to meet your needs.
While you might be carefully taking care of your families sanitation needs, your neighbors might not know how, or just do not care to do things in a sanitary fashion.
If flies and mice/rats are coming to your home from your neighbor’s garbage or toilet dump, you and yours will be exposed to disease pretty quickly.
Controlling mice and rats might be as simple as setting out baited traps. If you do, remember to handle traps containing dead critters with gloved hands as they carry fleas and ticks that can harm you.If flies become a problem be sure to cover your foods. Most food markets sell reusable food covers.
Flies can also be taken care of with Fly Traps and Fly Bait.My experience is that the Fly Traps work quite well if you keep adding water to the trap. They will fill up with lots of flies and maggots. However, they produce a very strong odor. (My neighbors asked me, "What is that bad smell coming from your yard.” I promptly removed the fly traps.)
What I ended up using is fly bait poison in the form of small crystals. I found this fly poison in a Farm and Ranch store, for use in barns. This poison quickly eliminated the flies. The flies come into contact with the crystals and go off and die. I love the stuff. HOWEVER, the crystals are very poisonous to animals and humans. If you elect to use it you might consider doing what I do: I put a small amount of the crystals into empty tuna cans and then put the tuna cans under and behind things (about waist high) where animals/pets and humans cannot come into contact with them. Be sure you wash your hands after using it.NOTE: The pictures I am showing here are not an endorsement of a particular brand, rather just samples of items you might find at your local store.
Another trap that I find useful for controlling mice, insects, and the dangerous forms of spiders commonly found around our homes are Glue Traps. These too I would conceal away from pets and children as they are very sticky. This season I have, in two weeks time, trapped four of the very dangerous Hobo Spiders – a cousin of the Brown Recluse Spider.There is a wonderful mouse and rat bucket trap that my wife and I have used for many years. We have one under the house and one in the garage. The one we used in our remotely located desert trailer was most productive. When we first put the bucket trap out at our trailer we harvested 12 mice the first day, 8 mice the next day, and 1 or 2 mice or rats each day following. I posted a short video on YouTube at Mary Ann's Cupboards YouTube Channel about this marvelous mouse and rat bucket trap. Here is a link to the video:
http://youtu.be/OijRH-lduq4
Should a disaster happen now, it might be too late to obtain these from your local store.
Happy Critter Hunting. [grin]
Tags: sanitation emergency preparedness critters insect control rodent control
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News Releases
Everyday Water Filtration Mary Ann gives you some great ideas for getting the most from your filtering water bottles. Saving them only for emergencies, isn't as practical as you might think... Release Date: 4/6/2023 | |
Super-size Your Stow-N-Go A re-post from Mary Ann a few years ago. Brush up on storing items you need on the go in your car year-round. Release Date: 11/13/2022 | |
The Lunch Box Bug-Out Bag From the Archive: Mary Ann shows you how to help your kids be prepared in case an emergency arises while they are at school. Release Date: 11/4/2022 | |
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