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Funny pest control !!!
Frannerz
Posts: 72
Whilst working as a gardener, tending the plants I had growing in our staff yard, I saw nature working as pest controller. My sunflowers had a small aphid problem so I was picking them off when a wasp started getting in my way. I realised I was in his way so stopped and watched. He quickly moved in and picked off an enormous aphid and flew off. I knew wasps dealt with aphids but had never seen it happen up close. It cracked me up, it was hilarious to me, a newbie to gardening at the time. All the other staff in the yard looked at me like i was a fruit loop.
Also caterpillar tantrums. Lol! I love caterpillars, the bigger they are the more fascinating I find them. I'm a fan of the moths they become really. When you try to move them off your favourite plant to a different area of the garden they go ballistic. I know why they do it really but I can't help but see it like a child throwing a tantrum. Lol ! Flailing around all over the floor because it wants to stay on that plant you just dragged it off of, and it does not want you to even try and pick it up again, not even with a leaf because it now knows somethings up and whatever medium touches it will result in a new coiling tantrum. I was demonstrating this to my other half, with a large caterpillar in my garden. Using a dead piece of grass I stroked the side of this caterpillar and to my surprise, no tantrum, it ignored it to begin with then it turned around and actually bit the grass !!!! I couldn't believe my eyes. It had huge mandibles too.
Also caterpillar tantrums. Lol! I love caterpillars, the bigger they are the more fascinating I find them. I'm a fan of the moths they become really. When you try to move them off your favourite plant to a different area of the garden they go ballistic. I know why they do it really but I can't help but see it like a child throwing a tantrum. Lol ! Flailing around all over the floor because it wants to stay on that plant you just dragged it off of, and it does not want you to even try and pick it up again, not even with a leaf because it now knows somethings up and whatever medium touches it will result in a new coiling tantrum. I was demonstrating this to my other half, with a large caterpillar in my garden. Using a dead piece of grass I stroked the side of this caterpillar and to my surprise, no tantrum, it ignored it to begin with then it turned around and actually bit the grass !!!! I couldn't believe my eyes. It had huge mandibles too.
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Wasps are fascinating things.....as long as they don't get in your drink. One time I heard a wasp taking wood from a trellis. The structure amplified the sound and I expected to see a large creature nearby so was very surprised to find that it was a wasp causing all the noise. Their papery nests are wonderful things.
I'm a fan of wasps too. They get such a bad press but they're great pest controllers. Like you Ceres, I've often watched them harvesting wood for their amazing nests. What a work of art those structures are. I've also seen wood wasps - saw one in this garden last year - which are even more incredible and very noisy!
Your caterpillar story reminded me of my walk on Friday. I stopped to take a few photos half way up the mountain, and there was a large hairy caterpillar clinging to a grass stalk. The pix were too blurry to put on here, but as I held the stem to take them, I turned it over and his little legs were clamped tightly round it so that he wouldn't fall off!
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Hi there, your experience with pest are really very funny. But I had never found pest as funny, they are always annoying to me. It was a huge mess when my house became a living place for those rodents and we finally had to call upon mouse exterminator NYC.
Hate the way we humans feel we have to exterminate anything that gets in our way. I had a mouse problem last winter. Like all 'pests', mice are incredibly resourceful creatures (they can shrink themselves down to squeeze through a hole the size of a pencil) and, besides, they're cute as a button. But yes, they also carry disease. So I bought a couple of TripTrap humane mouse traps, which are brilliant, and took the mice a couple of miles away to the woods and released them (luckily the weather was pretty mild). Worst case scenario for the mice, they may have provided supper for a hungry owl, so at least they didn't die in vain!
We had a couple of mice come in and did the same angie4, when we were buying our humane traps and discussing it we got the most awful look of a older gentleman who then proceeded to laugh at us. Did we care not one hoot.
Good on yer, beginner gardener. If people like us ruled the world, it would be a better place to live in, heh heh.
I can also recommend the humane mouse traps. My 'unwelcome visitors' came into the house courtesy of my cat who couldnt be bothered to finish the mouse off. Trap worked quickly and said visitor was released away from the house and garden in some scrubland.
Mouse traps are effective only when the number of ice population is less. But if the number increases then you have to try some other methods as they cause damage in big dollars. Thus calling upon a mouse exterminator NYC was my choice to eradicate them.
Do not like wasps, even the look of them, bees on the other hand are cute, (even though a bumble stung me, really painfull) Wondered why my peas were not germinating last year in the greenhouse, saw the mouse in the end, did nothing to try and get rid of him/her, just put covers over the propagaters, problem solved. Two years ago, we had really bad black fly infestation on our cherry tree especially the newer, smaller leaves, next thing, an amazing "infestation" of ladybirds. Ants are my bugbear,b ut I am allergic to them, if I get bitten. Monty says they do not harm your plants, well, the roses with ants nests underneath them die.
Haven't seen any ladybirds this year
but as yet not too many aphid either 
A few years ago one of our top bedrooms got inhabited by a pair of pigeon
we caught them in the bathroom boxed them and drove 25miles into the forest and set them free they made two big circles in the sky???and off they went. When we got back there were two pigeons sitting on the roof
they'd beat us home