Air Date: Week of March 14, 1997

Audience response to LOE's recent segment on natural pest removal. Listeners share their successes with everything from baby powder to geckos and guinea fowl.

Transcript

CURWOOD: And now it's time to hear from you, our listeners. Two weeks ago we interviewed Mississippi rancher Barbara Bird, who eliminated a terrible rat problem in her barn by moving in a snake. Her success story sparked many calls. Cockroaches plagued John Phlug when he lived in Hawaii. He said he tried many things, including poisons, to rid his apartment of the pests. Then his neighbor suggested he try bringing in some geckos.

PHLUG: So I did. Little lizards that have suction cup feet and who walk all over the place. I got 3 or 4 of those, turned them loose in the apartment, and the cockroach problem was gone. Plus the geckos are really cute and they chirp nicely.

CURWOOD: Edith Chase, who listens to WKSU in Kent, Ohio, wanted ants out of her house. Her solution came from a book.

CHASE: And it suggested using talcum powder. So I got some talcum powder off the shelf, shook it around in the area, left it there for a day, and they went away and never came back. Told my sister about it and she tried it and it worked on some ants that she had. Well then, last fall I had trouble with some larger ants and I thought I'm not sure this is going to work, but at least I'll try it. So I put down some talcum powder and left that there for a week before I vacuumed it up. They've never been back.

CURWOOD: Our last environmental solution for today comes from Wayne Terry, a listener in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father had a garden that had bug problems year after year. He tried going the pesticide route. When that didn't work he turned to a chicken-like flightless fowl called a guinea hen.

TERRY: The guineas actually, the first year he had them, went to the garden and ate the bugs. Ate the potato bugs, and he had no problems at all with any of the bugs that year. And his neighbor, on the other hand, had big problems. All his garden was pretty much ate up. So my father just uses these guineas, now.