September 12, 02
Deb and I took a whirlwind trip down to see House-on-the-Rock for the first time, while her brother and sister came up from St. Louis to stay with Louise. For those of you who have been expressing off-the-mark comments about a certain Scientific Writer's eccentric nature, I highly recommend that you visit this tourist attraction to find out what eccentric really means.
It was nice to get away, but of course while we were gone, the water stopped flowing out of our taps at the house. The one demand placed upon Deb's brother and sister was not to go into the basement. Remnants of multiple floods still mold and fester down there. But, with no water in the house, and her brother being a specialized plumber (commercial sprinkler fitter), the call of duty was too great and the demand was disobeyed. Aaaargh! I told them that they could have and should have dipped the green water out of the numerous stock tanks that abound on our place to wash up with, but noooo... he just had to identify and fix the problem. Well, I guess that is one less chore I had to do when I got back, and it freed up time for much more important experiments.
I found a source for Tanglefoot in a squeeze tube. So I got out a 6-inch flower pot, spray painted it bright blue, and layered a spiral of Tanglefoot around the body of it, topped off by what I hoped would be an enticing landing platform for pesky flies. Then I searched desks, the barn, and all of my tool and tackle boxes for an appropriate rubberband. This search took hours. Finally, Deb pointed to the doorknob leading down to the cellar that serves as her rubber band storage device. How ingenious. Harumph.
Anyway after mounting a rubber chin strap on the flower pot, I took it in and proudly presented it to Louise, who showed more movement and energy in shooing me away with her swatter than I have seen her display since her accident.
I couldn't let my work go to waste, so I offered it to Deb to wear. I married my wife for her looks, but not the one she gave me then. So it was left to me to have all the fun.
I donned the hat and provided the requisite moving target by roaming our stable, pasture, chicken house, kitchen, basement and woodlot. Results: Not one bug of any kind caught. It must work only for ambush flies like deer flies, but not stable flies, face flies, house flies, fruit flies, cluster flies, ladybugs, gnats or mosquitoes. I hope the Tanglefoot stays sticky until next year's deer fly season. I'm not ready to give up yet.
Kookamunga is starting to look like a Chesapeake Retriever. He is growing his winter coat and is now covered with short curly hair. Tuesday night we put him out with the cows for the first time, and he thought he was in heaven. Playmates at last! I'd be willing to wager that you never saw so much galumphing and bucking and roaring and drooling from a lot full of camel and cows. Our beef this fall may be a bit leaner in the end.
On another front, I think that maybe Deb is softening to the idea of a monkey. At the annual Labor Day sale at Foster & Smith, she bought a strong wire Gorilla cage (honest, look at their catalog) that was marked 90% off. That surely must be a hopeful sign. Since Louise refused to wear the flower pot, the first thing that I will teach that monkey is to wield a fly swatter and smack anything that lands on her. That should provide her long-desired and well-deserved relief from her fly swatting duties. .... On second thought, maybe I should teach it some fencing skills at the same time, just in case those two decide to duel it out. I think that if and when the time comes, I'll name the monkey "Old Swashbuckler".
I'm ready to foster a monkey for Helping Hands whenever they are.
Showing posts with label flies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flies. Show all posts
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Party Hats
September 5, 02
My three-day Labor Day weekend was spent serving as an attendant for my 84 yo mother-in-law, Louise, while my wife took a day off and then worked two extended 12 hr shifts in the ER.
Louise seems to be recovering well from her broken hip, but still can't put any weight on it. She spends so much time sleeping that she sometimes has a hard time distinguishing reality from dream, especially as she wakes up. Once she wanted to hop out of bed, make it, then go into the kitchen to whip up a meatloaf and mashed potatoes. No can do, darlin'.
So she is restricted to lying in the hospital bed, moving to the recliner, or perching on the commode. That leaves reading and TV and one other activity at which she is becoming unbelievably adept.... swatting flies with her swatter.
On our farm, flies are constant companions and they drive her crazy. She can be laying seemingly sound asleep with swatter in hand, and without opening her eyes, obliterate a winged intruder. The first time I saw that, I couldn't believe it. So I picked up a fluffy goose feather out in the yard, and snuck in while she was sleeping, and lightly tickled her arm.
SMACK! Boy did I get stung. And she didn't even wake up.
Well, to relieve her torture, I decided to see if I could find a new method for trapping flies. Fly paper is a mess, and the liquid fly traps stink too much to have in the house.
Then I ran across an article about a guy with a farm in Northeastern Ohio that got sick of being bitten by deer flies while out on his mower. His trick: take a bright blue plastic flowerpot, covered with sticky material (Tanglefoot) and suspend it upside-down on a pole, waving in the wind. The results were amazing: "The deer flies didn't even look at me - they were all buzzing around that darn flowerpot." Deer rflies are ambush predators. They wait for prey to walk by rather than actively searching for it, so they are highly attracted to movement.
Then a guy down at the University of Florida's North Florida Research and Education Center tried to figure out which shape worked best. After numerous experiments, the trap that wooed the most deer flies proved to be a 6-inch flowerpot painted bright blue, capturing as many as 30 deer flies in a one-minute test -- 35-50% higher than for any other shape. An assistant discovered that the traps also worked when attached to a baseball cap and trolled by the hat's wearer.
Now all I have to do is find some Tanglefoot and convince Louise to wear a blue flowerpot on her head. Come to think of it, I might just make party hats for all the cows, horses and the camel while I'm at it. I don't think that the neighbors would be surprised at the sight any more.
When I sat down and told Deb and Louise about my discovery, they refused to be guinea pigs themselves. Louise said that she'll stick with her swatter. I just nodded and told her about my observation that she could even swat flies (and me) in her sleep.
She just asked, "What makes you think I was sleeping? With you around, who needs a pesky monkey?"
O.K. No more goose feathers.
My three-day Labor Day weekend was spent serving as an attendant for my 84 yo mother-in-law, Louise, while my wife took a day off and then worked two extended 12 hr shifts in the ER.
Louise seems to be recovering well from her broken hip, but still can't put any weight on it. She spends so much time sleeping that she sometimes has a hard time distinguishing reality from dream, especially as she wakes up. Once she wanted to hop out of bed, make it, then go into the kitchen to whip up a meatloaf and mashed potatoes. No can do, darlin'.
So she is restricted to lying in the hospital bed, moving to the recliner, or perching on the commode. That leaves reading and TV and one other activity at which she is becoming unbelievably adept.... swatting flies with her swatter.
On our farm, flies are constant companions and they drive her crazy. She can be laying seemingly sound asleep with swatter in hand, and without opening her eyes, obliterate a winged intruder. The first time I saw that, I couldn't believe it. So I picked up a fluffy goose feather out in the yard, and snuck in while she was sleeping, and lightly tickled her arm.
SMACK! Boy did I get stung. And she didn't even wake up.
Well, to relieve her torture, I decided to see if I could find a new method for trapping flies. Fly paper is a mess, and the liquid fly traps stink too much to have in the house.
Then I ran across an article about a guy with a farm in Northeastern Ohio that got sick of being bitten by deer flies while out on his mower. His trick: take a bright blue plastic flowerpot, covered with sticky material (Tanglefoot) and suspend it upside-down on a pole, waving in the wind. The results were amazing: "The deer flies didn't even look at me - they were all buzzing around that darn flowerpot." Deer rflies are ambush predators. They wait for prey to walk by rather than actively searching for it, so they are highly attracted to movement.
Then a guy down at the University of Florida's North Florida Research and Education Center tried to figure out which shape worked best. After numerous experiments, the trap that wooed the most deer flies proved to be a 6-inch flowerpot painted bright blue, capturing as many as 30 deer flies in a one-minute test -- 35-50% higher than for any other shape. An assistant discovered that the traps also worked when attached to a baseball cap and trolled by the hat's wearer.
Now all I have to do is find some Tanglefoot and convince Louise to wear a blue flowerpot on her head. Come to think of it, I might just make party hats for all the cows, horses and the camel while I'm at it. I don't think that the neighbors would be surprised at the sight any more.
When I sat down and told Deb and Louise about my discovery, they refused to be guinea pigs themselves. Louise said that she'll stick with her swatter. I just nodded and told her about my observation that she could even swat flies (and me) in her sleep.
She just asked, "What makes you think I was sleeping? With you around, who needs a pesky monkey?"
O.K. No more goose feathers.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Fear Factor
June 27, 02
Something spooked a neighbor's horse just after I got home last week. The owners were gone and one of the kids from a farm down the road asked if I could come help catch it before it got in with the dairy cows.
I just happened to be in the process of pulling the 15th baby skunk out of our rhubarb patch and didn't want to let this one get away. I had just read a news release that Philadelphia was trapping and selling baby skunks for $250 each, and they were selling like hotcakes! On hearing this news I cringed at just having let 14 babies go in the woods.
With dollar signs in my eyes, and a skunk in hand, but a kid needing help with a rampaging horse, I ran to the truck to toss it in the pickup bed only to find that it was full of rolls of new fencing that I had neglected to unload. I knew that if I threw it in there, I'd have a heck of a time getting it out again, so I opened the front of the truck and tossed it in there. Where could it hide in there? Right?
We caught the horse after a small chase, and I went back to retrieve the skunk. I could not find it. Baby skunks don't exactly spray like the adults, but they certainly have a distinct odor that seems to be enhanced in warm confined spaces. The cab of the truck was beginning to reek, but there was no sign of a baby skunk. There are more hiding holes in the cab of a truck than there are in good Wisconsin baby lace Swiss cheese: up under the upholstery of the seats, under the dashboard, behind loose trim, under corners of floor mats, etc. It took three days before I recaptured that skunk and sent it off into the woods. I don't even want to think about the money that could have been had any more.
After that my wife decided that it was a good weekend for me to fix the chain on the manure spreader and clear the barn lot of a winter's worth of stall cleanings. Her hope was that I would replace my lingering rancid skunky stench with a more natural barnyard aroma in the process, I guess.
The timing was unfortunate for me, though. This week there was a huge hatch of "friendly flies". Last year the North Woods experienced an incredible infestation of forest tent caterpillars. According to the Minnesota DNR, in mid- to late- June, adult flies deposit live maggots on tent caterpillar cocoons. The maggots move into the cocoons, bore into the pupae and feed on them, which kills the developing caterpillars. After completing their feeding, the maggots drop to the ground, form their own pupal stages and remain dormant until the next summer.
Friendly flies (Sarcophaga aldrichi) resemble houseflies, but they are larger, slower and distinctly more bristly. They measure 6 to 12 mm long, are gray, have three black stripes on their thoraxes, and their abdomens are checkered. They drone persistently and swarm over everything. They don't bite, but they can soil things with their regurgitations. Unlike other flies, they can't be shoo'd away. They must be brushed off. Imagine one of those Fear Factor segments where a person is covered with spiders or bugs, and you have a pretty fair image of me working on the manure spreader and tractor. Ah, the joys of country life. I think I'd rather brush off snowflakes than flies and mosquitoes. Anyway, the barn lot got cleaned up to the point that the tractor overheated and the spreader chain broke again and wrapped around the drive gear.
And I had to drive the truck to work this week with the windows down so that my wife could have a usable mode of transportation.
Moral of the story: Greed stinks.
Something spooked a neighbor's horse just after I got home last week. The owners were gone and one of the kids from a farm down the road asked if I could come help catch it before it got in with the dairy cows.
I just happened to be in the process of pulling the 15th baby skunk out of our rhubarb patch and didn't want to let this one get away. I had just read a news release that Philadelphia was trapping and selling baby skunks for $250 each, and they were selling like hotcakes! On hearing this news I cringed at just having let 14 babies go in the woods.
With dollar signs in my eyes, and a skunk in hand, but a kid needing help with a rampaging horse, I ran to the truck to toss it in the pickup bed only to find that it was full of rolls of new fencing that I had neglected to unload. I knew that if I threw it in there, I'd have a heck of a time getting it out again, so I opened the front of the truck and tossed it in there. Where could it hide in there? Right?
We caught the horse after a small chase, and I went back to retrieve the skunk. I could not find it. Baby skunks don't exactly spray like the adults, but they certainly have a distinct odor that seems to be enhanced in warm confined spaces. The cab of the truck was beginning to reek, but there was no sign of a baby skunk. There are more hiding holes in the cab of a truck than there are in good Wisconsin baby lace Swiss cheese: up under the upholstery of the seats, under the dashboard, behind loose trim, under corners of floor mats, etc. It took three days before I recaptured that skunk and sent it off into the woods. I don't even want to think about the money that could have been had any more.
After that my wife decided that it was a good weekend for me to fix the chain on the manure spreader and clear the barn lot of a winter's worth of stall cleanings. Her hope was that I would replace my lingering rancid skunky stench with a more natural barnyard aroma in the process, I guess.
The timing was unfortunate for me, though. This week there was a huge hatch of "friendly flies". Last year the North Woods experienced an incredible infestation of forest tent caterpillars. According to the Minnesota DNR, in mid- to late- June, adult flies deposit live maggots on tent caterpillar cocoons. The maggots move into the cocoons, bore into the pupae and feed on them, which kills the developing caterpillars. After completing their feeding, the maggots drop to the ground, form their own pupal stages and remain dormant until the next summer.
Friendly flies (Sarcophaga aldrichi) resemble houseflies, but they are larger, slower and distinctly more bristly. They measure 6 to 12 mm long, are gray, have three black stripes on their thoraxes, and their abdomens are checkered. They drone persistently and swarm over everything. They don't bite, but they can soil things with their regurgitations. Unlike other flies, they can't be shoo'd away. They must be brushed off. Imagine one of those Fear Factor segments where a person is covered with spiders or bugs, and you have a pretty fair image of me working on the manure spreader and tractor. Ah, the joys of country life. I think I'd rather brush off snowflakes than flies and mosquitoes. Anyway, the barn lot got cleaned up to the point that the tractor overheated and the spreader chain broke again and wrapped around the drive gear.
And I had to drive the truck to work this week with the windows down so that my wife could have a usable mode of transportation.
Moral of the story: Greed stinks.
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