HATE MOSQUITOS? Rub vanilla, neem oil, citronella essential oil, baby oil and apple cider vinegar into your skin. You smell adorable and bugs can’t handle these items so they won’t be our admirers anymore. Neem oil is available at Indian markets. Healthfood stores often carry it. Dr. MERCOLA's WEBSITE GIVES THIS HINT.
SECOND Mosquito Deterrent: Put some water in a white dinner
plate and add just a couple of drops of
Lemon Fresh Joy dishwashing soap. Set the dish on a porch or patio.
Not sure what attracts them, the lemon smell, the white color, or what,
but mosquitoes flock to it, and drop dead, or fall into the water, or on
the floor within about 10 ft. Works just super! Enjoy the mosquito
free summer!
In California, where we have fatal viruses carried by mosquitos, West NILE VIRUS, we just don't go outside at night any more. Crows used to be the target. We had flocks, huge flocks. The bugs killed them all! Last year I saw four dead ones a day,driving to market.
OTHER BUGS- No-see-ums - Bounce strips repel mosquitos/biting insects. Keep them in your front shirt pocket hanging out or PIN to shirt of every guest....doing so all summer, at night. Then, as people file out, take them! Use them in dryer next day! (Though I don't use dryer in SUMMER!)
http://www.peoplesguide.com/1pages/chapts/health/bugs/boucne.html
A list pal of mine said "Bounce Strips are those sheets you put in a clothes dryer for softening clothes and preventing static cling. I have found that they strips work quite well for keeping away mosquitos and, maybe, even no-see-ums. You can put one in your pocket, pants cuff or pin it on your shirt if necessary. Tie a Bounce strip around my sandal and put another one my chest somewhere. That's all it takes; you need nothing on your skin.
I've tested them quite often with mosquitos and I'm quite sure they work, but I haven't been in many areas with no-see-ums so I'm not positive they work on no-see-ums. We were in Cozumel on Thanksgiving and many of us enjoyed wine on the beach at sunset. Everyone was bitten quite badly except me. WE thought they were mosquito bites, but later we realized they were probably no-see-ums.
Maybe you can share this with your readers and have them check them out. Bounce packs easily in Ziplock bags and leaves no chemicals on your skin.
One wonders how in the heck did that list writer ever come up with "Bounce" strips for bug protection? I wish I could take credit for discovering the fact that mosquitos hate "Bounce" strips, but I cannot. I happened to hear this little tidbit on a radio talk show in Los Angeles given by a Rabbi. After I tried Bounce the first time, I wrote him a thank-you email and asked if he knew if it also worked on no-see-ums. The Rabbi replied that he had no idea. He ask where in the world I traveled where such things were because he wanted to be sure NOT to go there.
Apparently, he had heard about "Bounce" strips for bugs, but didn't know if they actually worked or not as he'd never been anywhere to test them. It was just something he had heard somewhere. Mosquitos love me. If I am around no one else needs insect repellant, because the bugs always choose me over anyone else. I hate putting smelly sticky chemicals on my skin so I figured why not give Bounce a try. My first experiment was in Playa Del Carmen in 1999. A few of us were on the beach at sunset having a drink. I had sprayed my arms and legs with DEET but mosquitos were still landing on me.
I had brought Bounce strips along, not really believing something so simple could work. I pulled one out of the Ziplock bag and tied it around the strap of my top. I didn't have any pockets so that's the only thing I could think of to do. This simple strip drove the mosquitos loco. They came within a foot or so of me and then began buzzing around like crazy. I could hear them buzzing, but they only came about 12 to 18 inches from me and then they got disoriented. It's like they couldn't fly right. It made them nuts. But they never got any closer to me than that. I finally had my revenge! I wasn't bitten once then or anytime since and we have been in Maui, Kauai, Papua New Guinea, Cairns and Cozumel.
It's the most amazing thing. I have no idea why they work, but I am living proof that they do. I haven't used DEET since. We really want to go to Yucatan on a scuba diving trip, but I hear the no-see-ums are terrible there. I've heard they are so bad, that sometimes people have to leave because they can't stand it. I've been afraid to go because of that. Maybe now I can. I'm just not positively certain they work the same with no-see-ums. When I get bitten, I never hear or see anything so I'm never sure what bites me. I can only go by what people say are there.
I read that no-see-ums are a big problem at the southern resorts in Cozumel and that's where we were this past Thanksgiving. Like I mentioned, I didn't get bitten once but everyone else did. The bites seemed a little different than mosquito bites, but most likely there were both bugs around.
So if you give Bounce a try, please let me know your findings. If you’re certain that no-see-ums are around, then we will finally know for sure if they work on no-see-ums as well. It would be most appreciated. Best of luck and I hope this tips help other people as much as it has helped me. I also smell much better on our travels now.
When you go to no-see-um country, take a small (1 oz) bottle of pennyroyal oil along. (See Protection from No-see-ums?) I've put about 20 drops of pennyroyal oil in my regular organic repellent (I like Green Ban from Australia) and it keeps the no-see-ums away from me. But maybe it will be enough to just put a few drops of pennyroyal oil on the bounce paper. I also carry a small bottle of StingEze (from a pharmacy or camping store) and put it on any bites I get, immediately. It has an antihistamine, to reduce swelling, and Benzocaine to deaden the itching, so you don't scratch and make it worse.
To our readers: If you try Bounce strips, please let us know how they work for you.
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FLEAS- This is my area of expertise. The cure is dual track. First, hit the house, the carpets, rooms, the yard with a commercial mist. Everyone goes to the beach that day. Next, GO AFTER THE BUGS ON THE PET. Fill sink. Get shampoo. Dog or cat by now has run to the hills. Catch him, bring him, haul himin, soap him up. rinse a few times. If it's a kitten you can see the fleas, and pick them off. They mostly relax in the water and stare up at you thinking, this is it, right? You're going to drown me now? My genetic memory says that's what you plan. I continue to say "I love you, this is a bath, and I do the kind of stroke a mother does when she's bathing a baby. Rinse, towel dry, you can use hairdryer if it's cold. If a warm day and usually it is in flea weather, I take kitty into sun. FLEAS show up as copper bright, you can pick off.
FLEAS IN THE HOUSE - Get a
pie tin, fill with water, few drops of detergent. Turn a desk light on
over it, leave in the room that has the fleas. They dive toward the warm
moistness and swim in water that has lost its catlytic skin so they sink
in it and drown. Stay far away so you don’t hear their tiny screams!
glug glug glug, you miserable
#@(%(@!!
A FLEA TIP from a lister "When
I moved from Okinawa to Utah a number of years back, I brought
three dogs and a cat. I had taken two dogs to Okinawa, but I had
collected one Okinawa Warm Fuzzy and the dogs found the cat in the
back
yard. Okinawa is well stocked with fleas and my dogs wore flea collars.
I got a chance to get the fuzzy spayed, so I counted exactly three
months from the first day of her last heat and a month ahead I had
to
take off her flea collar (there were some bad reactions between whatever
was in flea collars and anesthetics). We were due to go to Utah in
a
very short time after that, and I still had her flea collar off. When
we
got to Utah I took her to the vet and said, "She needs to be dipped."
He
looked at me in a strange way and said, "We don't do that." I thought
he
was nuts, and I asked what groomer did that stuff. He told me he had
never heard of a groomer who did that either. Finally I said "What
do
you do for fleas here"? "Oh," he said, "We don't have fleas in Utah.
AND
THEY DON'T. "But she is really infested," I said. He reseponded, "Give
her a week." In a week the fleas were all gone. It has to do with borax
in the soil.
So when I returned to Pennsylvania from Turkey and bought a dog,
suddenly he had fleas. I was doing the constant combing and dropping
them into detergent water and using flea shampoos, when my subconscious
smacked me across the head, and I went to the store and bought a box
of
20-Mule Team Borax. The procedure is as follows:
Suck up 1/4 cup of borax into your vacuum cleaner and then vacuum your
house every day. You don't have to put the borax anywhere else. Every
time you replace your vacuum cleaner bag with a new one or empty it
if
you have a cloth bag, suck up another 1/4 cup of borax. Our Buncle,
a
Swissy, lived almost 12 years. He went to our local state park every
morning for a walk through the woods and weeds. The place has a great
stock of every varmint known to man. Our back yard backs up to what
is
now a golf course, but for most of Buncle's life it was a big wooded
area. We had wild turkey that came to the compost heap. Deer would
jump
our fence and eat out of the bird feeder. Raccoons would tear up the
ground under the feeder looking for grubs. Fleas everywhere of course,
but no fleas on our dog (frustrated vet with comb desperately looking
for an excuse to sell me that flea stuff). They must make a fortune
off
it. No fleas in our house. Nada. Zilch.
The dog died last September, and the neighbor's cat moved over here.
Now
no fleas on cat either. One box of borax costs me about five bucks,
and
I'm just making a dent in my second box (ten years). It's totally
effective and it's cheap. You do have to vacuum every day. I suppose
you
might manage it with every other day, but I wouldn't try it. It's the
air passing over the borax that does the trick. Fleas cannot reproduce.
It sounds too cheap and too stupid to be true, but it's the only flea
protection I've used for over ten years.
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Aussie LEMON ORGANIC METHOD
NATURAL FLEA SPRAY
1) To a quart of water in a pan, put in one thinly sliced lemon
and a Tablespoon ( heaping) of
dried Rosemary
2) Bring this to a boil, then take it off the heat, cool and
allow to steep overnight
3) Next day, strain into a spray bottle and store in fridge
4) Spray on your animals, carpet, even your own feet/legs when
you go into an area infested with
fleas---the acidity, from the lemon, will dissolve those fleas' exoshells
(or whatever they're called)
immediately
ANITA'S VERSION
This seems incredibly wimpy and homeopathic. However, this Aussie may
be onto something. So turn up the wattage. Beef the recipe up. Get
few branches of rosemary from garden, fresh, Simmer. Get a few unripe lemons,
the NOVEMBER
kind that are mostly yellow. Juice into the simmering pot, then drop
rinds in. Steep overnight. Strain Spray the entire house from knee height
but concentrate on carpets, animal bedding. If some is leftover, do the
outdoors pet areas.
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COMMERCIAL SPRAYS - I won't use flea collars as I wouldn't
put poison on my animals and give them Cancer. But I have found
that the RAID mist CARPET SPRAY and the bombs you
set off both work wonders. Every cat must be locked out.
Windows sealed, the mailbox stuffed with a towel. Door jams
blocked so wind cannot come in. Set off bomb and depart for an
hour. IF you use the hand sprayer, start in back corner, aim spray
low in all directions as you walk backwards outof room, shut doors.
I did five rooms and then shut myself in a bedroom which I did not
do,
put rags under door and went to bed. NEXT day not a flea bit my
ankles. IN ANY ROOM!
Diluted flea shmpoo can be used to wash an animal.MAKE certain
it says 'ok for cats' as they lick themselves. I always rinse it off
anyway. I find that bar soap works on a cat. It stuns the fleas.
Then I go out and find them in SUNLIGHT by their high copper color.