Duckie Warning!

The following information is guaranteed to give Duckie the willies. Consider yourself warned.

Ok guys... so hear me out on this idea... LOL

I think I have found a "something worth trying" to lay out on ya.

You all remember my scarecrow garden scene a week or so ago, where I had been treating some work clothes with permethrin spray to kill and repel ticks/chiggers while we are out working in our woodsy yard. The next day, I found a regular ole wood tick on our rug, so I did a test run. I dropped it onto the cuff of the hoodie I had treated, and watched in glee as it succumbed to a grand mal seizure and died after contacting the cuff for approx 15 seconds. The stuff DOES work!

Well, in my research on "tick eradication/prevention" I also found a product that was researched by the Harvard School of Public Health, and approved as an effective and safe way to reduce the tick population around our home. It's the same chemical, permethrin, in a format that goes right to the source of the problem... rodents!

Meet "Tick Tubes" ROFL

These are literally just cardboard tubes, stuffed with cotton that has been treated with permethrin, that you place all around where mice and ground squirrels make nests. The rodents use the free fluffy bedding to nest in, and the permethrin does what it does. The ticks die, the rodents live happily ever after, and the cat and dog and humans here enjoy a reduction in tick numbers. It works over time, for sure, but it really seems too good to be true. Can't hurt anyhow, right?

Fear not, however, that I would spend good $ on these things. We've already invested in a gallon of that permethrin (one gallon was cheaper than two aerosol cans and goes much further). We have TP tubes just sitting here waiting to be recycled. We have a sprayer we can dedicate to the cause, and we have oodles and oodles of known mouse nest areas to boo -by trap.

All I need now is fluff. And I have a brand new, too-fat-for-my-specs body pillow I wanted to rip apart and unstuff a bit anyhow.

So, I'm gonna be making tick tubes of my own.

Bwa ha ha ha!

I'll let you know if I think it's made a difference. Remind me next April to let you know.

My two day travelogue. First we got some gas...

Then we hit the road. On the way to St. Louis, we stopped to say hi to Mom, Grandma and Grandpa, and "the babies" (mom's infant sisters, who were buried there first). Cyster was on it with the flowers this year, and had them ready to go way before the "Memorial Day rush." Gotta hand it to her for being ready for that much of the trip! LOL

Got to the hotel and they had a dinner and drinks buffet waiting just for us. (and 400 other people) Nice!

Next morning, Sunday, we ate a huge breakfast (again, on the house hot food/buffet format, and amazingly yummy!) and had a morning to kill before Hyster's flight arrived, so we decided to look for a nursery/garden center to shop. Alas, Sunday mornings are not best for that, so the one garden-y place we found near the airport was the local Menards (which we have here in abundance too) but LOOK!

They had the red pole beans I'd been hunting for! Well, similar enough anyhow. Red "Asparagus beans" (top right corner) grow 12-24" long and are pole climbing beans. That fit the parameters I've been searching for pretty perfectly.

I snatched up a few packs of those, for sure!

Cyster got herself some bifocal sunglasses there. LOL I mean Menards has everything!

Then we hit another strip mall so she could run into a Ross Dress for Less, and I sat waiting in the car, because the car across from where we parked had this anti theft device on the steering wheel, and it alarmed me a bit. This whole "near the airport" neighborhood was a bit sketchy...

Thank goodness, no more shopping with Cyster. It was time to pick up Hyster and drive to the celebration of life venue, a half hour away...

Look what I have hanging in the kitchen…. I have to look up how to repair it…. should be doable I think