Certainly they are not anywhere near as bad as Scylla’s groundhogs, but I am afflicted with the oh so common earwigs in my mailbox. (What are they doing there, anyway? My mail is not that interesting…)
Short of dousing the box and its immediate vicinity with Raid, is there anyway to kindly get them to leave? I’m willing to give up Czechslovkia if it will help.
Step one: purchase backstreet boys cd or something similar.
Step two: Put cd under a box propped up with a stick. Tie rope to stick. lure unsuspecting moron under box and yank rope.
Step three: Cut yuke’s head off and place in mailbox.
Earwigs will swarm into the ears, get lost in there, and die of diabetes because of sweet nougat center of aforementioned yuke’s marshmallowy head.
You’re welcome.
Why not just douse with Raid? I’ve killed millions of bugs with the stuff, and yes, I know my yard is becoming toxic. I don’t care. I hate bugs.
Earwigs congregate in dark, moist areas where they can find yummy decaying plant material (wood, bark chips, leaf matter, etc.). Let the sun shine in, dry it out, and they’ll move on.
For a relatively effective “natural” insecticide, spray them with tobacco tea. I use leaves from ornamental tobacco, Nicotiana spp., but I wouldn’t be surprised if you could steep some shredded cigs for the same effect.
Also, a little soap in water, sprayed, makes a decent insecticide. You might need several applications; same for the tobacco tea. And then of course your dampness problem would remain, so it might require re-application at regular intervals.
(BTW, as has been treated by Cecil in one of my favorite of his columns, the whole earwig-in-the-ear thing is largely a myth; it’s been known to happen–“two known cases,” but less frequently than with cockroaches.)
Well, let’s see…
Premediated homicide is probably out of the question, though I appreciate the humor. Next you’ll be proposing fire-bombing or napalm to get rid of the moisture…
We have been getting a lot of rain recently, so that probably explains it. I don’t have tobacco of any sort around the house–might as well use the Raid I already have that says its a natural pesticide from flowers. But I’d prefer not to do that since the box is across the street on the neighbor’s property…
I think my best bet could just be leaving the door open, and that may air it out. Unfortunately it probably won’t see a lot of direct sunlight. Might be enough, though.
The pesticide “made from flowers” is probably pyrethrins, made from chrysanthemums. It’s the active ingredient in a lot of pet flea shampoos, so it’s purported to be relatively safe to animals. I’m fairly certain it doesn’t linger for long; I know it has no long-term effectiveness as a flea treatment.
I don’t know about birds; probably not a good thing for the insectivores.
And of course it would harm any beneficial arthropods (e.g., spiders) it came into contact with. But the same is probably true for the “natural” remedies I suggested.
There’s an awful lot of natural pesticide info on the web. Search engines turn up a lot of hits. You might find some more specific information that way.
All around, I imagine the solution with the fewest far-reaching consequences would be to treat them like vampires: expose them to the sunlight and watch them scurry away.
It is pretty easy to kill earwigs by drowning them. I was told to use beer in a dish to kill them and it works. I modified this because I didn’t want to waste beer killing earwigs so now I use yeast and water in an empty cat food can. They are attracted to the yeast but can’t get out of the water once they fall in. I keep one at the base of my mailbox and others scattered around in flower beds. You may want to change the solution regularly though because it can get to smelling pretty bad if it has been out for awhile.
Yes, this is all true. Most insecticides (even the ones used by professional Hired Killers like me) are designed to break down after about 30 - 35 days.
Earwigs do hang out in moist, dark areas, so making their habitat dry and light would probably help some. Also, I would bet that there’s some shrubbery or some vegetative matter growing very close to the box itself (as opposed to just around the bottom of the post). While the box may be on your neighbor’s property, you might explain the situation to them and prevail upon them to trim the shrubs away from the box, or allow you to trim it for them. Remember, the branches are a natural bridge for the little critters to climb into the box. And they also contribute to the moisture level and shade factors.
Tobacco tea is not a bad idea. Nicotine is a natural insect repellent. I suppose all you have to do is soak some cigarettes in some water and spray the stuff around the mailbox.
Well, yes and no. Even if a bird ate a sprayed insect, it probably wouldn’t get a large enough dose of insecticide to kill it. LD50 (the lethal dosage necessary to kill 50% of the target population) is measured in mg of product per kg of animal weight. So the amount it would take to kill an earwig or an ant is way less than what would be required to off a sparrow. As far as spiders go, unless you sprayed the stuff directly on the arachnid, it probably wouldn’t hurt it. A spider doesn’t touch much surface area, unlike earwigs, so they don’t really get exposed to any residual spray on the surface of things. Good news if you’re a spider-lover.
Raid is as good as anything out there. You don’t have to douse the mailbox with an entire can. Just a little spritz will do. I would recommend changing the environment first, though, to make it less hospitable for the little critters.
Good luck.