And you DEFINITELY don’t wish you had a problem like this:

The rat, which weighed six pounds and had a 12-inch tail, was caught at the weekend in a residential area of Fuzhou, a city of six million people on China’s south coast.

Take a look at the photo!

All bamboo rats are slow-moving and usually spend their time in underground burrows, feeding on bamboo. Chinese bamboo rats are often sold for meat in Chinese markets. The largest rats in the world are thought to be African giant pouched rats, which can grow up to 36 inches in length.

DEFINITELY not something I’d like to find in my roof!

via the Telegraph

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2009. | Do YOU have a Rat Problem? | 2 comments. Click here to add yours... |

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You may think that’s weird, but believe it or not, it’s easy to get maggots, and you don’t have to have a dirty house.

If you’re thinking how people could possibly get maggots, it’s really quite easy. Perhaps you missed the garbage disposal pickup day, or your cat has killed a bird that you weren’t aware of. Or, as happened in our complex, a neighbour ran over a bullfrog and didn’t pick up the dead body, and the flies had a FEAST.

So it may not even be your problem!

Because of the number of visitors seeking help, I decided to move the information over to a new website dedicated to maggots.

If you’d like to take a look, go to www.maggots.co.za

And, if you happen to land on this page looking for help on how to get rid of maggots, the main article on the new site to take a look at is this one:

A Definitive Guide to Getting Rid of Maggots

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You can’t see the ants, but drop a piece of food on the floor and wait 5 minutes. The food will either be gone, or covered in ants and on it’s way to being gone.

So I splashed out today. I paid R240 for imported Ant Poison. That’s a LOT in my opinion, especially for a 280 gram jar.

But it looks like it works like a charm.

The ant poison I’m trying out is “MAXFORCE Ant Bait Granules” by “Bayer Advanced“.

It smells like dog food and looks like tiny dog pellets, and the ants go CRAZY for the stuff. The key thing is, they don’t eat it on the spot, and it’s not immediately poisonous, so they take it back to the nest, and within around 7 days, dead ants should be noticed around the nests.

I poured this stuff around the house (outside) and it looked like the ants were on speed. 1 ant was busy carrying a dead fly of some sorts, and it dropped it for a pellet a quarter of the size of the fly.

Photos of ants and poison

Here are a few photos of the ants taking the poison (click for larger images):

Info about the Ant Poison

As I mentioned, I’m using “MAXFORCE Ant Bait Granules” by “Bayer Advanced“. Here is the information from the back of the packaging:

For outdoor use only

The delayed action of the active ingredient allows foraging ants to bring the bait back to the nest so that the entire colony, including the queen, is destroyed.

When properly used, this bait will control many structure-invading ants before they enter a building.

Do not apply other insecticides e.g. aerosols, sprays, etc. on top of or in close proximity to Maxforce Ant Bait Granules, as it will reduce the effectiveness.

Reduced activity and dead ants around the entrance of the nest should be noted around 7 days after baiting.

1. Perimeter Treatment

Lightly sprinkle granules at the rate of 6 g/m² in a band of 0,5m wide around the perimeter of buildings where ants are active. Treat ant trails, cracks and crevices where ants may enter structures.

2. Broadcast Application

Broadcast granules uniformly on lawns and other areas at the rate of 20 g/100 m². Bait will remain effective, even after exposure to rain and sprinklers, for up to 7 days in direct sunlight.

3. Ant Nests

Sprinkle approximately 30g of bait around active nests. Do not apply bait directly in or on the mound. If the mound is disturbed, ants will become agitated and may not feed on the bait.

So, I’ll be sure to take more photos in a week or 2 and see if the ant population in and around our house has declined.

And hopefully, this means the ants will stop climbing and destroying my herbs and fruit trees!!!

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2008. | Ant Poison that REALLY gets rid of ants | 12 comments. Click here to add yours... |

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In my other posts about how to get rid of frogs I talk about how it’s really just a case of making them choose somewhere else to live.

I did that by waiting for the frogs to leave their holes and then filling it up with river sand. Of course that means you’ll either have to wait until night time for them to come out, or force them out…

I forced them out by filling the holes with water. but it took a long time because apparently frogs can breathe a little through their skin…

Anyway, one of the main reasons I wanted to get rid of the frogs is because they leave their little (and in some cases NOT so little) frog droppings all over the place.

Their droppings can also look a bit like rat droppings I believe. But that’s for another time.

In case you’re wondering what frog droppings look like, here are a couple of photos (click on them to see the full size):

The first photo is just so that you can see the relative size of the droppings (the green leaves are thyme, so you should know they’re quite small).

The second photo is a close up of the droppings so you can see what they look like.

I can honestly say I was relieved the first time I found out that they were frog dropings and not rat droppings.

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2008. | Frog Droppings | Only one comment. Click here to add yours... |

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Karen had this to say:

For those dealing with the annoyance of fruit flies in the home, because we DO like keeping a number of fresh fruits and vegetables around the house, my younger brother has stumbled upon this remedy:

Pour a little wine into a cup.
Dip the tip of your finger into bubbly dish detergent and drip a drop or two into the cup of wine and swish it around.
Change the cup of fly-wine every few days until your problem is gone.

Works like a charm!!

After a little email exchange, Karen explained the reason this seems to work:

… I know it works.  My brother and father have had problems with the fruit flies and this worked for them both.

The amount of detergent is very little [we are not talking about drops of soap, but drops of soapy liquid as when you wash your dishes and the bubbles fall off].

The reason it works is because the surface tension of the liquid is broken.  The fruitflies would typically be able to stand on wine and drink it, but the soap changes the tension and the fruit flies fall in when they expect to stand on the surface.

Thanks Karen.

If you have your own tips or tricks, feel free to leave a comment, use the contact form, or if you’re a subscriber to this site by email, just hit reply.

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2008. | Get rid of Fruit Flies around the house | No comments yet. Click here to add yours... |

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Thanks to Julie, a reader who left a comment on the above post, we have this “definitive guide to getting rid of Maggots“.

She browsed for hours and hours and wrote a summary of what she has seen to be the most common resolutions to the problem of having maggots.

And with her permission, I’ve posted what she found. There is a lot of information to digest, so hopefully it proves helpful

And, if you’ve read the comments on the post about getting rid of maggots, you’ll know it’s a common problem. So use a solution from the list below, and know that you are not alone!

Killing maggots with chemicals

Products containing PERMETHRIN like:

- Doggie shampoo (heat water until boiling and use a strong amount of doggie shampoo)
- lice shampoo
- lice bedding spray
- RAID Wasp and Hornet Killer
- Raid Fumigator (a fogger) which is 12.6% Permethrin
- Raid Ant and Roach Killer (Outdoor Fresh Scent)
- Raid Max Foaming Wasp Killer
- Hot Shot Wasp Killer with Permethrin. More chemical solutions: Snail and slug bait
- Draino and hot water
- Pledge
- Fantastic or Formula 409
- hairspray
- brake cleaner
- carburetor cleaner
- motor oil
- gallon of boiling water with a cup of bleach and cup and a half to two cups of hydrogen peroxide.

Note: DON’T PUT BLEACH AND AMMONIA ON ANYTHING AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!!!

Get rid of maggots without chemicals

- Putting a napkin down and stepping on the maggots
- Using boiling water by sweeping them all into a bucket and pour boiling water over them or picking them up with tweezers and dumping them into boiling water
- Sweeping them into a pile and putting them into a plastic bag in the freezer until dead
- Holding a steam iron close to the maggots and hitting the steam button
- Using a steam cleaner on the carpets (they come right to the surface)
- Using double-sided tape (you can trap them to a specific area)
- Filling an open plastic container with beer and putting it near the problem area (maggots crawl into it and drown).

Preventing maggots

- Use self-sealing trash cans indoors
- Seal non-garbage disposable food
- Make sure your outdoor bins are sealed (No overfilling)
- Put up fly strips near your barrels or in every room of the house (or you could use my guide to making a home made fly trap)
- If you smell a foul smell – find the source
- Pour a cup or two of bleach down your sinks, bath and disposal once every two weeks to eliminate any debris and bacteria breeding grounds (bacteria smells draw flies)
- Bleach rinse all barrels once a month (this is a good idea even if you already line your barrels with plastic bags and seldom spill)
- Screen all windows and doors and replace or patch torn screens
- Kill flies by darkening the larger rooms and leave a brightly lit bathroom open (when the fly makes his way to the light, enter the bathroom, close the door and finish it off instead of chasing it around the house)
- Throw out old meat the day of or one day before the trash is taken out
- Wash out any pop/beer cans or food residue in the recycle bin (they will attract flies), tie your garbage super tight so the flies do not get in
- Dispose of fallen fruit from fruit trees and do not leave pet food outdoors.

A maggot conclusion

So, you can see from the list above that maggots can be dealt with.

Over 200 new visitors EVERY DAY come here looking for help to get rid of maggots, from all over the world. And I hope this site has helped them.

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2008. | How to get rid of Maggots | 12 comments. Click here to add yours... |

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Michelle uses it to spray on horses and on dogs to prevent the flies landing on them, and she’s allowed me to write about it.

Homemade Fly Spray Ingredients

- Apple cider vinegar
- Neem oil
- Lavender and rosemary tincture
- A squirt of tee tree shampoo
- Tee tree oil
- Water to dilute

Preparation of Fly Spray

I think Michelle says it best in response to the popularity of this idea:

My recipe is.
For the lavender and rosemary tincture I went to my garden and cut about 10 sprigs of Rosemary and about 10 lavender flowers + leaves and stems.

Soak overnight in about 4 cups of boiling water. Strain and add to 2 litre bottle.

To this I put:
- 1 cup of apple cider vinegar,
- 3 teaspoons of neem oil,
- 3 teaspoons of tea tree oil
- a squirt of tea tree shampoo.

I have recently added 3 teaspoons of pure citronella oil as this keeps the mosquito’s away.

Top up the 2 litre bottle with water after all the other ingredients have been added.

Shake well and transfer to a spray bottle.

Shake before each use to remix the ingredients

Hope this helps keep those pesky flies off our four legged friends.

Results

If you try this out by spraying it on your dogs or horses, please let me know how it goes. Michelle says it works for her, so I’m guessing it’s a good homemade fly repellent.

And thanks again Michelle, this is a great help!

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2007. | Homemade Dog and Horse Fly Spray | 9 comments. Click here to add yours... |

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—===—

Your webpage was quite helpful in understanding a situation where I had a kitchen invasion of maggots.

This is a summary:

Our home is built on a concrete foundation. The maggots were found coming out of a 1/3 inch gap between a ceramic tile floor and drywall behind the oven. I will leave out all the drama behind finding the source. I could not get to the nest of maggots so I had to let nature take its course.

Hot shot wasp killer with permethrin works to kill maggots, but it takes a long time to work. It is also a repellent. The drawback? Once the Hot Shot dries, it stops working as a repellent and killer. The maggots crawl right over the dried Hot Shot for Wasps. That is the only product that worked to kill.

Putting a napkin down and stepping on them worked fastest and quickest and probably safest. That way there is no dried bug juice to try to clean up later. Three people killed maggots until night. We had to get some sleep so I do not know how many escaped.

If I had to do it all over again, I would use the napkin kill step method until they all came out of hiding. Using the wasp killer made them find other cracks to crawl out of making our job harder — they started coming from under the baseboard.

What does not work at all:

Bleach: They crawl faster
Vinegar: They keep crawling
Lemon juice: They keep crawling
Boiling water: Maybe this method was okay in a dumpster but not in a home. It was one big mess and took a loooong time to work. I stepped on the maggots to ease their suffering. Also boiling water is messy. Once the water cools, the newly arriving maggots moved even faster in the liquid. You see my point.

My advice is to keep the floor clean of dead maggots so you can see the new ones better — a challenging job when you have literally a thousand of them running around.

One thing that I left out: doggie shampoo with permethrin! Heat water until boiling and use a strong amount of doggie shampoo. Pour into area with lots of maggots – it kills! That is how I got some rest. I poured the solution down the crack about every half an hour. The method also allowed me to see where the small crack led outside the foundation to the house. The foundation is not cracked. There are small spaces left by the builder so that the building can “breathe” which supposedly prevents mold inside the walls. It seems a fly made it inside the opening.

The maggots mostly traveled toward our sliding glass door so I guess there is something built into the maggots to tell them which way to go. 24 hours later we are killing about 2-4 maggots an hour.

I am unsure what could have died inside the wall as we have no critters inside the walls that I know of and have no way of ever knowing. We do have birds that roost under on the roof area so maybe they are the source of food. I will likely never know for sure.

This website provided help to know what to do that would work and confirmed what did not work.

How could anything survive bleach????

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2007. | Maggots | 89 comments. Click here to add yours... |

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They won’t stay if they HAVE nowhere TO stay!

You may notice the frogs in the evenings, sitting under your porch light, or, if you’re unlucky like us, coming into your house. I’d have to guess the frogs are attracted to the light because that’s where all the insects are.

Well, a couple of times I noticed the frogs coming out of the brickwork on the floor at a certain section of my garden. They can squeeze through UNBELIEVABLY tight spaces, so I would not really have thought of looking there before. But the one evening, I was having a braai (or, barbecue, for non-South Africans), and noticed a large frog coming out of the ground. So I thought that getting rid of their living area would force them to move.

I don’t really care if they live next door, I just don’t want them in my house!

So, here’s what I did…

Flush the frogs from their home

I don’t really want to KILL the frogs, just get rid of them. So I wanted to kick them out of their “home” before removing it. So I tried filling the gaps with water. I let the hose run for a LOOOONG time, not believing how deep this hole must have been. It took a while for the frogs to eventually come out, considering they can breathe through their skin (apparently). There were 3 LARGE frogs and 1 baby frog. I helped these frogs find new accommodation by throwing (ok, dropping) them over the wall.

A word of caution: WEAR GLOVES WHEN HANDLING FROGS! Not necessarily because they’re poisonous (I doubt you’ll have poisonous frogs, but don’t take my word for it). When you catch them, they will pee all over your hands…

Fill up the frog house

Next, I took river sand, and attempted to fill up the gaps/hole where the frogs were living. I don’t really think I filled the hole 100% due to having to pour the sand through gaps INTO the hole, but I did a fair job.

Refill the holes

Either the baby frog didn’t enjoy his new home next door, or there were a couple of frogs that I missed, but every now and again I notice a hole where the sand in the gap looks like it’s been dug away. I just top it up with more sand. Any movement below will just help the sand settle in, making space for more. Eventually, no frogs will be able to stay in the hole.

Results

I did this about a month ago, and I’ve only seen the baby frog once. But we haven’t had any frogs coming into our house, so so far so good. Personally, I hope they’re living it up next door. Just don’t tell my neighbour that I sent them.

Moral of the story, if the frogs have nowhere to live, they’ll move on. It’s the reason we have them anyway. The land where they USED to live is now being developed. I feel sorry for them really, but hearing my wife scream is a lot worse for me than worrying about where they’ll live…

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2007. | Battle with the Frogs | 14 comments. Click here to add yours... |

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Some of them didn’t even realise how easy it was. And, because most people tend to have the ingredients already, it can be cheaper than the cheap fly traps from Builder’s Warehouse.

So, are you curious as to how to make one?

What you need:

Empty 2 litre plastic coke bottle
1.5 cups of water
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of vinegar
+/- 1m of string
Small piece of meat (OPTIONAL)
Serving spoon of Syrup (OPTIONAL)

Are you keen?

If you would like to download the illustrated eBook on making your own home made fly trap, subscribe to the Newsletter by clicking here:

Enter your email address in the form on the left of this page where it says “Subscribe” or Subscribe to the newsletter.

Once you confirm your subscription, you will be taken to a page with the link for downloading the eBook.

And then you can send me photos of your fly traps so that we can create a gallery of success stories…

© James for Make a good house a GREAT home, 2006. | Homemade Fly Trap | 17 comments. Click here to add yours... |

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