How to kill a bug ?

Lightbringer · 2019-09-27T12:58:39.000Z

Mmmm, after going all summer without seeing all that many yellowjackets around here at all, it seems they just now discovered the Secret Location of daily catfood deposits.

I may have to whip up something like that…

mountainair26 · 2019-09-27T15:01:09.000Z

snakebite:

harbor freight racquet with bleeder resistor clipped,powered by an 18650,and as big and many hv caps as i can fit in the handle.
hearing protection may be required.
i have one here that will blow a wasp to bits and ring your ears.

Got any pics of the resistor you clipped to use an 18650 and more power? I have the same tennis racket, and it works like a charm for a cheap piece of harbor freight doo doo for the time being. But hey, it can’t hurt to have a little more power and use my laptop pulls to toast bugs.

snakebite · 2019-09-27T15:11:30.000Z

Its like a 10m across the big cap.
And i got some big film caps at midwest surplus in fairborn oh.
Iirc mine are .1uf 1600v
Got lucky i guess.
Most larger capacitance hv caps are way too big to fit and prohibitively expensive.
Larger capacitance=bigger bang for your bug!

snakebite · 2019-10-22T12:11:00.000Z

well the yellow jackets faded fast here.
so maybe next fall we will have a video of yellow jacket massacre.

Rayoui · 2019-10-22T12:44:39.000Z

I once captured a wasp inside my apartment with a Dyson vacuum with one of those clear collection bins. No matter how long I spun him around in the running vacuum, he just wouldn’t die. I used a 500mW green laser to cook him right through that clear plastic bin. That did the trick.

Helios_azimuth · 2019-10-22T16:27:46.000Z

Lightbringer:

People think corn is bad? Imagine eating crickets, grasshoppers, whatever, and then crapping out legs, wings, antlers, etc., later on.

Nooooooooo thanks.

The market in Oaxaca Mexico has huge piles of roasted crickets or grasshoppers. People buy buy bags full for cooking. The best restaurant in town has cricket enchiladas on the menu. And in Mexico City at least one fine restaurant has ant eggs on the menu. Guess it depends upon where you grow up, escargot anyone?

Lightbringer · 2019-10-22T17:09:40.000Z

Helios azimuth:

Guess it depends upon where you grow up, escargot anyone?

Just exchanged email with someone about that t’other day, oddly enough.

Went to Canada on a ski-trip, spent the day in Montreal, some of us broke off to hit a McD’s, the others a fancy schmancy French restaurant. God, how everything’s slathered in cream sauce… Anyway, one of our group ordered escargot in the cutesy little ceramic dishes with individual holes for each snail. His reaction was meh. Not horrible, not great, just meh.

I’m not even a fan of clams. Nice taste, but like chewing on pencil-erasers. So I prefer them finely minced to near microscopic bits like in canned chowder. Calamari? Like eating weatherstripping…

Still, to me, the idea of eating something that should be sprayed or stomped on just doesn’t appeal.

Now, someone explain to me what could possibly entice someone to create and eat “maggot cheese”.

snakebite · 2019-11-19T05:50:24.000Z

well it warmed up a bit today and i got a visitor inside.
queen yellow jacket.
BLAM!.
she will not start a nest in the spring.

raccoon · 2019-11-19T08:22:02.000Z

snakebite:

well it warmed up a bit today and i got a visitor inside.
queen yellow jacket.
BLAM!.
she will not start a nest in the spring.

Good for you!

I don't know if I have encountered a yellow jacket, but I have been around wasps.

They're tough to kill, and honestly, they scare me.

snakebite · 2019-11-19T11:33:47.000Z

i am sure you have one if not several types there.
size of a honeybee but black and yellow.
nasty suckers.
nest in the ground and may go unnoticed all summer till you find them with a lawnmower.
at that point there may be thousands of them in the nest and you have a big problem.
nearly lost a 92 year old neighbor to them.
she was weedeating and set off a nest.
a neighbor happened to have an epipen and administered it just in time.
thats why they get exterminated on sight here.

raccoon · 2019-11-19T11:58:07.000Z

I've seen pictures of them online, but I don't think I've seen one in parts of Northern, Central, or Southern California.

I do not know their natural range.

I have seen plenty of wasps and bees, though.

Lightbringer · 2019-11-19T17:11:50.000Z

Hateful little things, they’ll follow you and go after any food you might have on you. And they seem eternally pissed off, like those African-American bees everyone’s a-skeert of.

And B’harni help you if you have any food on you. They’ll chase you across the planet trying to get it.

And yeah, they live in subterranean burrows, and if you make the mistake of disturbing their nest, they’ll swarm and kill ya dead. If you see one, best to just KIWF if you can.

nuemtol · 2019-11-19T21:39:22.000Z

Reading this made me think of indoor moths. Maybe an effective trap would be rolled up contact paper, with a small LED inside the tube to attract the moths. Cheaper than regular sticky traps, and able to make any size, but maybe it's more effort than it's worth. You could just stick a light inside the tube, or wire a battery outside of the tube. Permanent trap & easy/cheap to service

snakebite · 2019-11-19T23:37:04.000Z

Counting on them to be attracted to the light but being clumsy fliers that hit the inside and get stuck?

wle · 2019-11-20T16:42:26.000Z

i think the answer is more along the lines of ‘have a shoe ready’.
any light bright enough to kill bugs will also blind you.

hank · 2019-11-20T17:29:21.000Z

If you want to stretch your species tolerance, this is good reading:

amazon.com

Wasp Farm: Evans, Howard Ensign: 9780801493157: Amazon.com: Books

Buy Wasp Farm on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

and

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Loved-Wasps-Howard/dp/1555663508/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/141-3522031-7668857?\_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1555663508&pd_rd_r=6d568dac-7ea6-41a7-aa21-035c22a0462a&pd_rd_w=7IvN1&pd_rd_wg=DwLB0&pf_rd_p=52b7592c-2dc9-4ac6-84d4-4bda6360045e&pf_rd_r=VV6MMFD979ACHEND3N5H&psc=1&refRID=VV6MMFD979ACHEND3N5H

I learned to be very tolerant of baldface hornets — the ones that make the big gray football nests. They” recognize faces

Culture – 12 Apr 11

Wasps Can Recognize Faces

Paper wasps may discern faces to keep the peace in complex colonies, a new study suggests.

and always left me alone if I left them alone and just calmly walked by; their guards come down and hover in front of my face then go back to the nest. Best home security system I’ve ever had, as when a stranger gets near the guards don’t hover, they zoom in and bounce off the stranger as a warning.

Encouraging them can make the neighbors a little crazier than usual.

Especially neighbors who don’t know the difference between them and the ground-nesting, picnic-plaguing yellowjackets. Them, I don’t want around.

snakebite · 2019-11-22T12:01:55.000Z

had a nest of bald face hornets in a bush next to my parking spot.
one day in late summer i parked and heard what sounded like rocks hitting the van.
and when i got out i got stung.
they went all summer with me parking there every evening and all of a sudden get pissy?
had to eliminate that nest.

Lightbringer · 2019-11-22T18:07:56.000Z

KIWF!

snakebite · 2019-11-27T00:58:32.000Z

few puffs of delta dust and all dead in the morning.

Lightbringer · 2019-11-27T01:33:21.000Z

Verboten to purchase in Noo Yuck without the appropriate papieren.

Guess we’re back to KIWF…