![]() Moles can eat their weight in worms and grubs every day, so they find healthy, well-watered lawns-which are full of worms and grubs-very attractive. Mice can pass disease to humans through their waste. TIP: Before you sweep up mouse droppings, always spray them with a disinfectant spray such as Lysol. Place them back-to-back with the open doors on each end. Live traps are best used in pairs in the same manner as conventional mousetraps. Favorite baits of professional exterminators are chocolate syrup and peanut butter. While mice can jump over one trap, they can’t jump two. The best technique is to set two traps, parallel to the wall, with the triggers facing out. For an average-size house, two dozen mousetraps would not be too many. Place snap traps along walls in areas where you’ve seen the telltale brown pellets. Mice have poor vision and prefer to feel their way along walls. And because you toss the remains in the garbage, there are no dead mouse surprises to encounter later.Ĭommon mistakes with do it yourself pest control are poor placement of traps and using too few of them. Snap traps may seem cruel, but compared with a slow death from a glue trap or poisoned bait, they’re a more humane way to exterminate mice. Snap-type mousetraps, when well placed, can be an effective way to rid your house of mice. ![]() If the paper is still in place after a few days, the raccoons have left. To make sure they’re gone, stuff the entry with newspapers. If raccoons have already made a den in your attic or crawl space, put a radio, flashing lights, ammonia, mothballs or commercially available repellents in it, then give them a few nights to leave.Fencing is available from farm supply stores and Internet suppliers. Protect vegetable gardens, especially if you’re planting sweet corn, with wire electric fencing (consult the manufacturer’s instructions for spacing and wiring instructions).Raccoons eat garbage, pet food, fruits and vegetables, and fish from garden ponds.Wait until the fall after the babies are out but before hibernation, or until you’re sure the raccoons are gone. Block crawl spaces and other possible entry spots with securely nailed 1/4-in.-mesh hardware cloth.If you hear raccoons in the firebox in the spring or summer, you may need to wait until the fall for the raccoons to leave before capping the chimney, or else call an animal control specialist. Fireplace chimneys make great dens for pregnant raccoons. Add chimney caps, or replace them if they’re damaged.Cut back overhanging tree branches and brush so raccoons can’t get onto the roof.Try these DIY pest control ideas to get rid of raccoons: The best way to discourage these pests is to make your house and garden inaccessible. Light, water, noise and chemical repellents may work in the short term, but raccoons eventually learn to ignore them. Along with honoring the interdependence of life forms and offering provocative thoughts on the meaning of individuality within a rigid but highly intelligent mass-minded hierarchy, the author heightens awareness of the mundane, deadly struggles for survival that go on every day beneath our feet.Raccoons will eat almost anything and are always on the lookout for a good nesting site, so our houses, with all their nooks and crannies and overflowing garbage cans and backyard vegetable gardens, are very appealing. His sympathetic profiles of his fellow researchers around the world suggest that, like this vital but often invisible player in the ecosystem, they don’t command the respect they deserve. Moffett’s guide can be read before taking a trip to Brazil or around the backyard. ![]() He reports from an ant battlefield near San Diego where supercolonies of Argentine ants clash in internecine warfare that leaves an estimated 30 million dead every year, a casualty a second. On a slope of the Sierra Nevada he witnesses the species Polyergus breviceps raid a nest of Formica argentea and carry away the young to be raised as slaves. Such exotic behavior is not confined to exotic locales. Raised on horror tales of army ants, he appreciates the frightening tactics of marauder ants in India, a species that swarms over its prey with a practice called “mobbing.” In equatorial Africa he describes the flank of a tethered antelope that had been devoured by driver ants: “It’s no coincidence that people living within range of driver ants keep their babies on their bodies and let their livestock roam free.” ![]() Luckily, our voyeurism about the gory, pitiless world of insects is also his. Moffett is a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution who writes with an entertainer’s instinct for hooking a restless audience. ![]()
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