[ExI] confused trees and bees, FW: Season's Greetings from the Federation

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of Dave Sill
Subject: Re: [ExI] confused trees and bees, FW: Season's Greetings from the
Federation

 

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 12:59 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>>.We tend to notice when bees decline, but would we notice if other bugs
went missing?  My ants are gone without a trace.  If some bug virus
decimated the ants, how would we know it had happened?  Perhaps I could talk
the local hardware store out of some information on sales of ant poison and
boric acid.

 

>.Spike, you should consider contributing to the National Phenology Network,
<https://www.usanpn.org/>.




>.USA National Phenology Network


>.What we do: The USA-NPN developed
<https://www.usanpn.org/natures_notebook> Nature's Notebook, a project
focused on collecting standardized ground observations of phenology by
researchers, students and volunteers.-Dave

Thanks Dave!

There is another factor in play here.  My house had always had ants,
outside, inside, everywhere except the kitchen of all odd things.  The ants
never really did go after the stored food, or seldom did.  I kept them under
control using boric acid and the usual local hardware store remedies, but it
was imperfect, even though I used to spend over a hundred bucks a year on
ant control.  I had ants nest in an electrical outlet in one of the
bedrooms.  They were in the closets, in the bathrooms, everywhere except the
kitchen where I use a lot of windex.  They would go outdoors to gather food,
then come in to sleep or whatever ants do at night.  I had ants in my citrus
trees, used to do experiments with them and so forth.

About four years ago, my neighbor came over, said he had met a guy who
claimed he could rid the house of ants (my neighbor had an even bigger ant
problem than mine) but we had to pay him cash and couldn't ask any
questions, Jose would take care of the problem.  I refused, assuming he
might use something dangerous, but reconsidered when my neighbor said he
would not need to come indoors at all.  I thought it over and forked over
the fifty bucks in cash.  I didn't see what that man did.  He showed up in a
beat up white pickup, no advertising on it at all, he was here for about 15
minutes I think, did both houses, did everything outdoors only.  The ants
have never been back since.  I assumed he was an illegal Mexican guy with
chlordane, but I used chlordane back when people had stockpiles of it left
over from the 1970s.  I might be mistaken, but I don't recall that stuff
lasting for four years.  The ants never recovered from whatever it was he
sprayed.  I haven't bought ant control stuff since, and still have some left
over, unused.

>From the citizen scientist point of view, that observation is important, but
lacks detail.  I might be able to get a soil chemical analysis of some sort,
if I know approximately what I am looking for and can design my own
qualitative analysis.

The extermination biz here in the states keeps plenty of proles in jobs, for
a number of homeowners have them come in on a regular basis, and they do
spray stuff indoors.  All this time, there is some guy named Jose who can
solve the problem for apparently years at a time, staying outdoors, all for
fifty bucks and some mystery chemical.  Oy.

spike

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20131220/89ce37cf/attachment.html>