How do you handle pests and rodents?

[Dr. Pink]

How do you handle them? And what's you're personal opinion about killing them( Even if there just insects )

 

Personally. I would never kill a rodent or a mouse or anything like that. I never really had a problem with killing flies in the past but recently I really don't like to do it so I stopped killing all things( To avoid being called a hippocrite mostly since I imagine vegans don't kill anything )

 

But it also comes to mind that perhaps under certain circumstances perhaps it is the only option.

 

Let me give you some Examples/Situations.

 

This one is drawn from a real life experience.

 

My Best friend( While not a vegan or even a Vegetarian ) is against killing insects. But there was one situation where he had no choice. We were at his mother's house and somewhere on the property( Either in the back or the front ) was a big Hornets nest( Which is mother is super highly allergic to ) So he got rid of them and there nest.( Because it was becoming a problem )

 

 

 

In these situations. What would you do personally?

 

Situation #1. You're house is over-run by a fly invasion. There's at least a couple thousand of them. And there just inside you're house. Breeding. There's maggots everywhere too crawling on the floors and kitchen counters.

 

Situation #2. You're home is being over-run by termites and there devouring you're house.

 

Situation #3. You and you're child are on a picnic and you notice a bunch of red ants crawling on you're child's legs. And he happens to be allergic too.

 

Situation #4. The Flies are pissing you off. All you want to do is eat your food which they keep trying to touch with there nasty, dirty bodies.

[Aaron]

Live with them if ya can, I usually let the spiders run free if it's just one or two. If ya can't live with them then catch them and take them outside. And if you can't catch them and relocate them then squash em.

 

Sorry bugs.

 

-a

[Dr. Pink]

I usually live with them the best I can too( Talking more about flys which I hate more then spiders even though I'm afraid of them more then flies )

 

But when I do get too annoyed I usually just hire a Hitman( Either my Mom or my Brother )

[Marcina]

I'd let my cats get the mice. Hey, it's the nature of things. Mini, my one cat, used to live outside. We found her on our front doorstep, starving. Her family abandoned her. I'm sure she's eaten a few mice.

 

The other night, I was in Alberta visiting family. West Nile Virus is a problem there and a mosquito landed on my shoulder. I didn't hesitate to squash it.

[CollegeB]

My girlfriends cats brought fleas into my house. I aborted their larvae and (bug) bombed the rest of them into submission. Generally though I leave whatever critters alone. I've got spiders and who knows what else running around my place. Raccoons eat the garbage, rowdy neighbors keep me up with drunken howls, cats, dogs, mice, moles; yup I leave them all alone. Oh and as a rule I kill ticks I find on my person. I just hate parasites.

[Marcina]

You gotta kill ticks some can give ya Lyme Disease.

 

I guess since I sometimes sell flea meds to people at work I kill insects indirectly eh?

[Im Your Man]

ticks are a real calamity. I don't mean those that usually live on cats and dogs, but the other ones that prefer human blood, I forgot the exact name of those insects but they black and bigger and stink a lot. I must have killed thousands of them, but that was before I became vegan. Once I lived in a shitty place where all the building was infested with ticks, so much that it's gonna stay like that or they need to destroy 90% of it. I couldn't sleep, I've read they can bite a person about 500 times per night, sucking so much blood a person can become anaemic. Lately it was a huge problem in Montreal, there have been even some hospitals infested because some people arrived with ticks on their clothes. They had to destroy many walls, clean everything, taking many precautions and procedures to inspect every new patient and their clothes, etc.

 

 

About mices and other rodents, I never had that problem living in the city but since a few months I'm in country side and some nights I couldn't sleep because they're in the walls making noise biting the wood.

[Im Your Man]

Now that I'm vegan, when I find insects in the house most of the times I capture them and throw them out, but sometimes with flying insects it's easier to just kill them... I prefer doing this than having a mosquito sucking my blood while I sleep and who knows maybe infect me with aids or another disease. But I never kill spiders (I just get rid of those that are too big) because they're very useful in a house, to kill all the other insects

[Richard]

If I was in any real danger, I would kill an animal. When there isn't a danger and it's just a mild inconvenience, I'd deal with it in a non-fatal way, or not take any action. I don't live in an area with dangerous animals wandering around, and I haven't been infested. Most I had was something like 7 flies in a room at one time, which was actually really irritating. But I still dealt with it without killing them. Killing an animal would be the last resort, I'd have to be totally infested before I got serious - but it is a possibility.

[DaN]

I went to a friends outdoor pool recently & got bitten by some horse-flies.They normally live around farms here in the UK & suck the blood of horses to live.

 

One bite on my knee made it swell up twice its size within a day.

 

As they are a parasite, & are unable to survive without sucking blood from poor innocent horses, & my knee, I took great pleasure in killing several of them with one of those foam floating boards they give to kids.No guilt at all.Same for mosquitoes.

 

Spiders, I do not like because they catch & eat my favorite bug, the wood louse.

 

But I dont kill them, I just catch them & throw them out.

 

As for actual life threatening situations, like being attacked by a rabid dog or something, youve just got to defend yourself.

 

It does annoy me when people immediately kill rodents etc because they are a pest, often when the person has moved into the animals area, & is then offended that the animal is still there.Killing the bears in Canada really hacks me off.Stupid people shouldnt live near the poor things.

 

We should always try to avoid killing anything, at all costs, & only if its the last resort, kill them.Unless they are horse-flies, the filthy scum.

[medman]

I kill anything parasitic without mercy. My mosquito-killing technique was perfected while working at a wild bird rehab centre (with more mosquitoes than I'd care to remember). I can drop them out of the air anytime without getting any mess on my hands. The key is a super-quick moment of contact between the hands, like the technique you use in karate to break boards/bricks .

 

I love spiders. After all, they eat the bugs that I probably don't want around anyway. Any big bug like a moth, I'll always try to catch and release outside.

 

While I would hate to be put in that position, I would have to kill termites/carpenter ants. My uncle needs a new foundation on his house because they had an undetected termite problem for so long that it's totally shot. As much as I like to "live and let live", if they're going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars in repairs, I'll have to get rid of them.

 

I'm against using chemical pesticides in any situation where they're avoidable, though. Those things are damn scary.

[DaN]

I kill anything parasitic without mercy

 

Good man

[Lena01]

I kill anything parasitic without mercy

Yea, like in the Caribbean, there're Aedes aegyptis and they transmit dengue which I don't want to catch again. So I'd kill them. I'm your man don't worry, you won't get AIDS from a mosquito I think. (medman correct me if I'm wrong).

About rodents, I dunno, I couldn't kill them, I'd catch them to take them out and clean/close all the reasons why they were attracted to my place.

[Im Your Man]

I have 4 cats (3 of them are kittens) that hunts every insects in the house, and the mother kills almost every grasshoppers that live outside near the house -- she capture one every 5 minutes (I'm not exagerating) and comes back to give it to the kittens. About a hundred grasshoppers per week.

 

I tough mosquitos could spread about any virus, including Aids ? When a mosquito took blood from someone infected, of course.

 

I fell on this while browsing movie titles on IMDB :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438938/plotsummary

"From the hyphotesis of British journalist Edward Hoope, the film reopens the explosively controversial subject of the origins of AIDS, zeroing in specifically on his fiercely contested proposition that the HIV virus was first transmitted to children in the Belgian Congo via contaminated polio vaccine".

[medman]

Yea, like in the Caribbean, there're Aedes aegyptis and they transmit dengue which I don't want to catch again. So I'd kill them. I'm your man don't worry, you won't get AIDS from a mosquito I think. (medman correct me if I'm wrong).

About rodents, I dunno, I couldn't kill them, I'd catch them to take them out and clean/close all the reasons why they were attracted to my place.

 

No, you're right. There has never been a documented case of HIV infection from a mosquito. Mosquitoes don't mix blood between meals, they inject their saliva into you - mosquito-borne diseases result from the pathogen (e.g. the parasite that causes malaria) moving into the salivary glands of the mosquito, and some diseases do this (as they use the mosquito for part of the disease cycle). There has never been any evidence that HIV can do this, and there has never been a documented case of someone getting infected from a mosquito bite.

[Lena01]

Mosquitoes can't transmit every infection. When they bite a person the don't inject the blood they have inside, what transmits other diseases is their saliva which they do use when biting; as HIV is not kept in the saliva but in the blood it's not possible for mosquitoes to transmit AIDS. Then, many of them are so small that the virus doesn't even survive for long inside their bodies and as mosquitoes take nap breaks after biting somebody, when they bite the next person there's very little chance that they will have HIV inside.

 

Other than that, if mosquitoes could transmit HIV much more people would be using repellent and even infected persons would be kept away from the non-infected ones.

 

EDIT: It seems to me that we were writing this at the same time as I repeated you unnecesarily.

[Im Your Man]

yeah I guess you're right about HIV for mosquitos, but they can infect humans with other severe viruses. We always hear about it on tv, it,s one of the tools medias use to spread terror among population. Perhaps not only by saliva but just their thing they use to drink blood with, like our needles for drugs and medecine : just a tiny quantity on the tip of the needle is enough if you scratch yourself with it on skin, no need to put back the infected blood from the syringe into you.