From time to time we often get people asking how to keep possums away, so we decided to offer a few tips and ideas on how to keep these noisy night time creatures away from your home.

Blood and Bone – place at the base of plants

Egg Powder – Mix 200g dried egg powder per litres of water with wetting agent,

then spray plants.

Quassia Chips - add 100g of chips to 400ml boiling water. Stand 5 minutes, add

one litre of cold water and allow to soak for 24 hours. Strain, add a wetting agent,

(Wettasoil) and spray onto plants.

Unpalatable Plants to Brushtails

Brushtails tend to dislike plant species that are prickly and spiny, such as Grevilleas and Hakeas. Also consider tough and woody plants such as Banksias and Melaleucas.

Brushtails also tend to avoid strong smelling foliage plants such as Chrysanthemums, Mint Bushes, Geraniums and Daisies.

If you don’t mind Mrs Possum and her baby visiting, you may consider installing a possum house in a back yard tree or pole. Generally, possums only invade the roof void of houses is that there is a scarcity of suitable, safe accomodation for them due to removal and clearing of their native habitat.

POSSUM HOUSE-nesting boxes now avialable from our Buy Pest Control Products www.ridpest.com.au/buy-pest-control-products.php

Subterranean Termite Swarmers

Don’t be alarmed…be informed.

BACKGROUND

From October through to late March, termite swarmers, more correctly named “Alates” will be noticed on those hot humid afternoons. Termites are normally white to almost transparent, wingless and totally blind, however Alates are specially produced reproductives with black pigment, wings and eyes, and their single task is to find a mate of the opposite sex and set up a home in a decayed log or stump where the female can lay a couple of dozen eggs, raise the babies and then allow the new brood to take over the care and maintenance of the new colony. The queen then goes about producing literally millions of eggs for the next 20 to 30 years.

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DID YOU KNOW?

• The average airspeed of the common housefly is 7.24 kilometres per hour. A housefly beats its wings about 20,000 times per minute.
• The animal responsible for the most human deaths worldwide is the mosquito.
• The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size is the ant.
• The average bee can travel up to 17.7 kilometres per hour.
• House flies, on average, live for only two weeks.
• The life expectancy of a queen bee is 6 years, a worker bee wears out its wings within 6 months, and a drone survives just 8 weeks.
• Some spiders can travel up to 1. 88 kilometres per hour.
• The caterpillar has more than 2,000 muscles.
• The fastest insect on record that has been reliably measured is the Australian dragon fly, which has a top speed of around 57 km/h.

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You know the old expression “sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite”? Well, it really is an old expression, because the cimex lectularius, or the common bedbug, has existed for thousands of years.

They are rather tiny insects belonging to a species that is typified by its need to have blood meals to survive. Their victims are primarily human, but at a pinch, animal blood will do.

Adults bedbugs can measure as much as 5mm (about the size of an apple seed and much the same colouring), and are easily visible to the naked eye if you are up to catching them. Because the bedbug gets its name honestly, seeking out victims in the dark of night, their victims are usually in bed.

They are not spawned, nor attracted by dirty environments however. This is a very common misconception. What really draws them is a source of warmth and exhaled carbon dioxide. The cleanliness of a room, bed or entire home, really has nothing to do with their presence. The bedbug will crawl into the bed, feed off its host, and return to their dark lairs for the daylight hours, although under especially appealing circumstances, they will emerge in daytime. A well-fed bedbug can survive up to a year and a half without eating again, but their instincts usually lead them to seek a meal, every 6-12 days.

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This is our first post to our new blog, Scorpions are the topic so here we have a little bit of information about scorpions.

Scorpions are widely distributed throughout Australia.

They tend to be larger in the warmer northern areas. On a world scale, Australian scorpions are relatively innocuous, with very few, if any reliably documented deaths having been recorded.

Local pain and swelling are the major clinical problems following Australian scorpion stings. First aid consists of the application of iced water and analgesia if required. The scorpions of central and south America and Africa are much more dangerous, with thousands of fatalities and serious illnesses occurring every year in these areas in relation to scorpion envenomation.