Spring, 2000
© Moore Consulting, 2000.
All Rights Reserved
Perimeter Treatments Protect your Castle Pest Prevention Tip of the Month Treat Your Lawn Right Proof of Head Lice Reisistance Please Don't Smuggle in "Pets"! Mouse Virus Linked to Breast Cancer Pest Trivia! Monarch Navigation
Perimeter Treatments Protect your Castle
In the Middle
Ages, a moat around a castle not only made it difficult for armies
and thieves to get in, it probably also helped keep out many
crawling pests. But our perimeter treatments around homes and
businesses are much more effective in preventing pest problems,
and they don't use up all the valuable space!
Why are perimeter treatments so important? A wide variety of pests find their way indoors, especially for food, water, or shelter, or they may accidentally come inside during their wanderings. They enter through thousands of tiny cracks and various openings.
Pests like ants can usually come in and then find their way back out again. But many other pests like earwigs, crickets, sowbugs, and pillbugs enter easily but usually can't find their way back out. They wander around, sometimes feeding if they can find something suitable to eat, eventually dying indoors.
For example, crickets eat food like crumbs, fruits, and vegetables, and can feed on and damage fabrics such as drapes, carpeting, and clothes. Occasionally huge numbers of these and other pests, like springtails and millipedes, migrate indoors from outdoor breeding areas. Sometimes these pests are so numerous that they practically cover walls and floors.
Perimeter treatments are just one of the important tools Stanley Pest Control uses to enable our customers to enjoy the benefits of a pest-free life!
Pest Prevention Tip of the Month
Pet food left out overnight invites
trouble with pests, so remove it nightly. Raccoons, rodents,
and many insect pests such as cockroaches and carpenter ants,
quickly learn where to look for food, and will visit that spot
nightly
Why is it important to keep your lawn green and healthy? There are many good reasons--social, economical, and environmental.
A well-kept lawn is still a symbol of beauty, pride, and respectability--part of the "American Dream." A beautiful lawn is what we want to come home to. It provides a cushioned, comfortable and relaxing play area, and it increases the attractiveness of our home.
A well-kept lawn also adds value to our home (in some cases as much as 15%), and by keeping it healthy and free of damaging insects and diseases, we avoid the expensive process of replanting sections or the entire lawn.
But most people are not aware of the many environmental benefits of a healthy lawn. Lawns trap dirt from the air--it is estimated that they trap 12 million tons of dust and dirt from the air annually, making the air cleaner. Lawns also cool the air around a home, reducing energy consumption. When the temperature of a sidewalk or street is well over 100 degrees, the temperature at the surface of the lawn will remain around 75 degrees. They also reduce soil erosion.
Lawns are also excellent oxygen producers--a 50 x 50 foot healthy, thick lawn produces enough fresh oxygen for a family of four, while absorbing the ozone, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide we produce.
If you are not already using Stanley's lawn services to protect your lawn investment from hungry insects and damaging lawn diseases, call us today. We can help keep it green and healthy all year!
Proof of Head Lice Reisistance
It has long been suspected that head
lice are becoming resistant to the insecticide permethrin, the
most common active ingredient in lice shampoos.
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health collected head lice from Idaho. These lice were exposed to progressively higher doses of Permethrin in a laboratory, and most of the lice were not killed. When the researchers subjected head lice from Borneo (where permethrin is rarely used) to the same doses, the lice were quickly killed.
The study did not look at how widespread
louse resistance is in the United States--future studies will
look at this. For newly discovered head louse infestations, using
a special lice comb and an over-the-counter lice shampoo is still
the best choice. If that doesn't work, use a product with a different
active ingredient. Additional head lice information is available
at the Center's website: www.hsph.havard.edu/headlice.html
Please Don't Smuggle in "Pets"!
Did you know there are approximately 50,000 non-native species of plants, animals (including insects) and microbes in this country? This costs us about $139 billion a year in control and damages! Plus, nearly 50% of the native species listed as endangered or threatened in this country are at risk because of these non-native species, which can multiply and create an environmental nightmare.
So when you hear of someone who is smuggling "pets" into this country, or buying smuggled pets, you have a right to be very upset! Smuggling illegal pets is more common than you might think. Some of these poachers get caught, like the Australian who recently tried to smuggle out 31 lizards and faces up to 10 years in prison. Last year a person was caught smuggling 600 rare Mexican Red-Kneed tarantulas into the U.S. He faces a sentence of up to 25 years in prison plus a $1.25 million fine. (The spiders are protected under Mexican law and the U. S. Endangered Species Act.)
It is illegal to bring in any living plant, animal, or insect without a permit. It may seem harmless, but some of these "pets" get loose and become very costly, and can damage our environment.
Mouse Virus Linked to Breast Cancer
The British Journal of
Cancer reported in January that perhaps 40 percent of the
44,000 annual cases of breast cancer in this country could be
caused by a rodent-borne virus.
That viruses can cause certain kinds of cancer is now well established. For instance, human papiloma virus can lead to cervical cancer, and hepatitis has been shown to cause liver cancer.
The highest rates of breast cancer in the world are where the house mouse is either native or has been introduced. In areas with a low rate of breast cancer, the house mouse is not found. Plus, DNA studies show a correlation between the rodent-borne virus and breast cancer.
While the evidence may point to a relationship between house mice and breast cancer, it is still just a hypothesis that will require further testing to confirm or disprove. If the virus is involved, a vaccine could be developed to prevent it.
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Pest Trivia!
1. Who has more muscles--a man
or a caterpillar?
2. How many cockroaches does the average roach-infested household
contain?
3. What new pest in Chile has been destroying large numbers of
trees?
4. How high can a rat jump from a flat surface?
Answers to Pest Trivia!
1. You probably guessed it--a caterpillar!
These creatures can have over 4,000 muscles--people have about
792.
2. About 20,000 (If it's the common German cockroach). The vast
majority of them stay well hidden.
3. Beavers. They were brought to Chile by fur breeders, but they
are multiplying and spreading so successfully that they are now
being called "the plague that can't be stopped."
4. 3 feet!
Researchers recently found
that Monarch butterflies have an internal magnetic compass that
guides them on their long migration paths. The magnetic compass
allows them to fly in the right direction on cloudy days--and
even inside a room without windows. Up until now, it was thought
that Monarchs relied solely on sunlight to chart their courses.
One of the migration paths of Monarchs is from central Mexico to the U.S. What makes this migration particularly fascinating is that a certain butterfly knows the correct direction, yet it has never made the trip before and will never complete the full journey. Monarchs fly, lay eggs, and then die, and it's the next generation, or several generations later, that reach the final migration destination.