Posted by Owen Jones
It seems pretty disgusting to the majority of Westerners that many people around the world eat insects on a frequent, even daily, basis. This is not always only because edible insects are so plentiful and money is so scarce. In many countries, some insects are considered a delicacy.
I am not an authority on edible insects in every country, but there are so many kinds of edible insects where I have been, that there must be similar edible insects in every country with the exception of the North and South Poles.
Eating insects may sound repulsive to us, but I have met individuals who think that it is just as revolting to eat prawns, shrimps and lobsters. After all, they are just insects of the sea of a kind. And just like eating shrimps or lobster, insects are either the major or only part of the dish. In other words, they are thought of as just as much a luxury as shrimps, prawns or lobster is in the West.
Insects are not eaten with rice, chips, in a sandwich or with a sauce. Rather insects are deep-fried in a wok and eaten from a plastic bag like chips. Insects are not mixed when cooked either. You buy fifty grammes of one and fifty grammes of another and they are enjoyed separately.
Insects are plentiful and they do not have to be bred, unlike cattle. An interesting fact is that beef is about 20% protein whereas insects are between 65% and 80% protein. Surprising, eh? 50 grammes of insects provides more protein that a half-pound beef steak and they contain scarcely any cholesterol.
If you would like to include insects in your diet, then you will need to examine the subject with regard to your own country, but I will give some pointers. In the insect world, yellow means 'stay away from me, I am poisonous or do not taste nice', so it is best not to eat them. Most insectivores stay away from hairy insects too, so spiders and house flies are out as well. Mosquitoes are too small as are ticks and many other insects.
While some caterpillars can be eaten, some cannot, so leave them to the experts. The best insects to go for are beetles, termites, larvae, grubs, grasshoppers, crickets and some night-flying insects.
In Thailand, for example, most people will eat insects for a luxury, although some people eat them every day. In the north-east and in the north-west, people might eat insects once a month. In the centre, like Bangkok and Pattaya, cooked insects are sold on the streets, so they are readily available. They are eaten regularly in the south and in the east, which is known as Isaan.
However, all over Thailand, you can witness ultraviolet lights over insect traps. These families will either eat the insects themselves or sell them on to a dealer. I have also seen people collecting a fly which only comes out at night after rainfall. You can gather thousands in an hour by putting a bowl of water under a street light. The insects get stunned by the lamp and spiral down into the water where they drown.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on quite a few subjects, but is currently involved with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.
categories: insects,mosquitoes,home remedies,garden,house,health,hobbies,recreation,disease,flora,family,outdoor,other,uncategorised
Tags: disease, family, flora, Garden, Gardening Articles, health, hobbies, home remedies, house, insects, mosquitoes, outdoor, recreation, uncategorised
Posted by Owen Jones
It is heart-breaking for dog lovers who care about their pets to watch them scratching incessantly. Itchy skin can become such an annoyance that a dog will pull all its hair out of a patch and then still scratch its skin red raw. If this happens to your dog, then you know that something is seriously wrong.
It could be a question of canine psoriasis, but this is very improbable, if your dog is on a healthy diet. No, nine times out of ten, it has to do with an infestation of fleas or, less commonly, ticks. Therefore if you see that your dog is constantly scratching a spot, check it. That spot will normally be on the dog's back just in front of its tail - one of the favourite places for fleas to collect.
So, the first thing to do is look for fleas and comb most of them out. This can best be carried out in the garden or you may get an infestation in your house as well, although if your dog has fleas this severely, then your house is probably already infested.
Once you are sure that the itchy skin problem has to do with fleas, you can get on and take care of your dog. Go to your vet's or your pet store (which is almost certainly cheaper) and get an insecticidal shampoo and flea powder for your dog and a permethrin based insecticide for your house. If they have a soothing canine skin cream, a small tube of that will come in handy too.
Leave the dog in the garden and get out the vacuum cleaner. Open the bag and give it a hefty squirt of permethrin or flea powder and zip it up. Vacuum clean your house from top to bottom in order to pick up fleas and any loose eggs.
Do not forget the furniture and the curtains. When you have finished, spray the curtains, furniture and carpets with permethrin and put your own bedding on a boil wash.
Then take your dogs basket and blanket outside and shut the door. Do not go back in for an hour minimum. In the meantime, shake out the dog's basket and blanket and dust it with flea powder. Now you can turn your attention to your dog.
Give him a thorough bath in the insecticidal shampoo following the directions on the label. When he is dry, rub some skin cream or olive oil on to his red bald spot. It is better not to use human skin cream because it contains chemicals and your dog will lick it off, unless you put a ruff around its neck.
You may have to do all this twice in order to kill the new hatchlings, but some insecticides will kill the eggs as well. When you have got your dog back to normal, brush and bathe him more often in the future and be watchful for fleas.
Another constant source of annoyance to dogs is mosquitoes. Mosquitoes normally bite dogs on the snout and the undercarriage and they suffer the same problems from bites as we do, except they do not whine about it.
Do not apply DEET or any chemical because the dog will lick it off and it is not to be taken internally. Instead, try a lemon based natural fragrance as mosquitoes detest the smell of citrus. Put a few dabs here and there every hour or two when the dog is outside after dark.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.
categories: fleas,mosquitoes,insects,dogs,home remedies,garden,house,health,hobbies,disease,family,outdoor,other,uncategorised
Tags: disease, dogs, family, Fleas, Garden, Gardening Articles, health, hobbies, home remedies, house, insects, mosquitoes, outdoor, uncategorised
Posted by Owen Jones
We all hate insects getting into the house, do we not? But I do not like squashing the ones that get in either. However, I live in northern Thailand, 100 yards from thousands of acres of sodden rice fields. The farmers spray their fields to reduce the number of insects, but inevitably there are still quite a lot here, especially in the two monsoon seasons.
Therefore, we have had to secure our house and ourselves against pests, mostly of the flying variety, but not all of which bite by any means. In the monsoon periods of the year, which are approximately May to June and August to September, the main culprit is the mosquito. There is no malaria where I am, but they are still not nice. Simultaneous with the mosquitoes are the midges, but they are not nearly so many.
When it is not raining, the familiar house fly is a pest. You just cannot teach a housefly not to sit on you or your food, I have tried it many times. The lessons almost invariably result in the death of the student by corporal punishment.
On arbitrary rainy days hordes of other kinds of flies will hatch out within hours - you can see masses of them coming out of the ground like bees, but they more resemble lace wings. They are completely innocuous, but they get in your hair and everywhere else. Then there are a few types of fly that eat rice or humans if they get in the way, but they seem to prefer rice.
The first thing we did was have fly screens inserted into our windows. That helped a great deal, but everybody kept leaving the doors ajar. Then we had screens inserted into the door frames. That really was effective for everything except midges and baby mosquitoes that seem to be squirming through the mesh.
We solved that issue by spraying the mesh with permethrin once every couple of months. I am pretty certain that no insects get into our house via that route any more. However, some insects were crawling in under the doors, because there were no thresholds or draft-excluders - a draft in Thailand normally being more than welcome. So, I fitted draft-excluders to the doors.
That blocked the scorpions, spiders, millipedes, centipedes and beetles, although some spiders seem to abseil down from the attic into our living quarters. I do not mind spiders too much as long as I cannot see them, because I know that we have a mutual enemy, to wit flies.
House flies still get in sometimes, especially when visitors and their children are about. However, the type of spiders we have most of, do not seem to build webs. They stalk their victims and then pounce on them; and they are very quick.
In spite of that, we spray the floors and the tops of the walls with permethrin every month or two as well. This stops the ants from entering the house via the attic and mops up any crawling insects that have gotten in via an open door.
Another significant entry point into your home for insects is your pets. You have to take care of your cats and dogs. Brush them frequently, fit a collar which has been impregnated with insecticide, bathe them in insecticidal shampoo and dust them with flea powder.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on many subjects, but is at present involved with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.
categories: insects,mosquitoes,home remedies,house,garden,health,hobbies,recreation,disease,flora,family,outdoor,other,uncategorised
Tags: disease, family, flora, Garden, Gardening Articles, health, hobbies, home remedies, house, insects, mosquitoes, outdoor, recreation, uncategorised
Posted by Owen Jones
Have you ever heard about clothing that deters mosquitoes and other flying insects? If not, I am prepared to venture that there have been times when you have wished you could get some. Mosquitoes and midges can wreck a holiday or even make you have to get out of your own garden when it starts go get dark.
There are various ways that you can fight mosquitoes and the other terrors of the dusk, but they always seem to find a spot where I am not totally protected. Often that spot is on the shoulder blade, where they will stick their proboscis through the fabric of your shirt to extract your blood.
I enjoy my garden, but so do the mosquitoes as there is a lot of open water in the surrounding area. My first technique of defense against mosquitoes is to plant flowers and trees that they are known to hate the smell of. I think that the odour that they hate the most is that of lemons.
Therefore, we have a few small lemon saplings, which will soon be playing a vital role in our protection, a patch of lemon grass for my wife's favourite Thai curries and some as yet poorly-looking citronella plants. (I think that Thailand may be too hot for them, but I am hoping that they will acclimatize).
Then I have two mosquito lamps. The type that lure the insects to an ultraviolet light and then electrocutes them with 25,000 volts. They are very efficient, but more so in the dark than at sunset, when they must be less discernible to the insects. I know that there are insect lights that use smells or pheromones to attract mosquitoes, but I have not seen any for sale over here yet. I did once try a device that emits a sound on a high frequency that was supposed to drive them away, but it was not effective on our mosquitoes.
In conclusion, if it was a bad night I used to put on some insect repellent cream, often something that had DEET in it. This is very effective for a few hours, but it can spoil some textiles and some plastics, which is why the makers recommend that you only put it on your exposed skin. If you do that, your shoulders and your legs become targets, even if you are wearing trousers and a shirt.
This is when it becomes a good idea to treat your clothing with insect deterrent. It seems that the military has been wearing them for years. The active ingredient used is called permethrin and it should be used at a concentration of 0.5%. There are two means of applying it: by drenching clothing in it, as the army does or by spraying it on. I assume that you will be spraying it on.
Do the spraying in the garden far away from any fish pond as permethrin kills fish as well. Spray the clothing and wait for the chemical to soak in and dry out. Clothing treated with insect repellent in this fashion will protect you for about six weeks and will still be active after six washes. However, sunlight breaks permethrin down, so dry the items indoors and store in black plastic bags for longer efficacy.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.
categories: insects,mosquitoes,home remedies,garden,house,health,hobbies,recreation,disease,flora,family,outdoor,other,uncategorised
Tags: disease, family, flora, Garden, Gardening Articles, health, hobbies, home remedies, house, insects, mosquitoes, outdoor, recreation, uncategorised
Posted by Owen Jones
There are occasions when it just seems that there are more insects than previously. Perhaps it is the warmer winters and wetter summers helping them breed more easily, or maybe it is because fewer people are using pesticides in their gardens. It is quite understandable that a lot of people do not want to use chemicals on their gardens, but not using anything at all results in a boom in the insect population.
Over the last fifty or more years, people have become more and more used to using chemical insecticides to poison household and garden insect pests because they are a faster and morecertain killer. So what do you do if you want to manage the quantity of garden insect pests, but do not want to use chemicals?
Well, you would have to revert to using natural insect pest killers, although most families have forgotten what their great-grandparents used to use to eradicate insects. The following is a list of some of the natural ways of killing insect pests. However, not all techniques or plants will be available in all countries.
Stinging nettles: if you cut down a bunch of stinging nettles and steep them in water for a week or more, chemicals will leach out of the vegetation into the water. Strain the water off and spray it over your plants. It will kill or discourage most garden insects. You can also use it as a plant food, but you will have to be careful how strong it is.
Rotenone: is a biological insecticidal. It is made from the roots of the derris plant. It kills by attacking the stomachs of insects. However, it is rather slow-acting and needs to be reapplied often in order to obtain the maximum effect.
Washing Up Water: soapy water of any sort will kill aphids or greenfly amongst other garden insect pests. This is a very easy control to administer. Just strain your soapy water into a spray gun (like an empty window spray gun) and blast your greenfly.
Corn meal: you can dust this around plants or skirting boards to kill insects. If a tomato hornworm or a cockroach eats some, the cornmeal will swell up in the insect's stomach with the bodily fluids in there and the insect will eventually explode.
Pyrethrum: will paralyze an insect, but it will also wear off, so it is often mixed with a poison to finish the insect off. Otherwise, you can pick them up.
A mixture of cow's milk, flour and water can be employed as a natural insecticide, funnily enough. It is very good at killing the eggs of insects. It also destroys insects themselves by blocking their breathing holes. In other words, they asphyxiate.
Neem is a very common tree in India and has medicinal as well as insecticidal uses. This natural insecticide repels insects by means of an active constituent that mimics an insect hormone. It makes it hard, if not impossible, to digest food and it stops their cycle of reproduction. It works most effectively of all on insects that primarily eat leaves.
Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.
categories: insects,mosquitoes,home remedies,garden,house,health,hobbies,recreation,disease,flora,family,outdoor,other,uncategorised
Tags: disease, family, flora, Garden, Gardening Articles, health, hobbies, home remedies, house, insects, mosquitoes, outdoor, recreation, uncategorised
Posted by Owen Jones
Most people have an exaggerated abhorrence of insects. In particular people who live in towns and cities. People who live in the country are a bit more understanding of them. But why are we like that with insects? Why are we always squashing them and poisoning them? All right, we do not want to share our homes with them, I think that is fair enough, but I also think that we go too far sometimes.
As an alternative to just destroying them on sight, it might be better to try stopping them getting into the house in the first place. A lot of people appear to assume that all insects are bad, but this is just not the case. Just imagine how many more flies we would have flying around us and landing on our food, if it were not for spiders, but I do not know anyone who likes spiders. They do not seem to get much credit for doing a great job. We are on the same side against flies.
But then flies help to quicken the decaying of dead animals as well. Their maggots eat the decomposing flesh of dead animals, which keeps disease and bad smells down. Ants do the same for dead insects and cockroaches do it for scraps of food left lying about. I have not found a good reason for mosquitoes, fleas or ticks yet though.
One thing is for sure, this congenital or learned hatred or fear of insects does not do the makers of insecticides any harm money-wise. Maybe it is time to take a step back from our paranoia about insects. It is well past time to be more discriminating in our slaughter of insects.
For instance, when you spray your beautiful rose bushes with a chemical insecticide, you want to get rid of greenfly (aphids), but you are also killing the ants, the ladybirds, the spiders and possibly any bees or butterflies that come to feed and pollinate. Whereas, if you had sprayed the bushes with old, filtered washing up water, you would only have killed the greenfly.
Where would we all be if everyone killed all the pollinators? Cropless? In fact, the scarcity of bees is already a global crisis. Although the reason for their fast declining numbers is not quite clear, it cannot help having their immune system or nervous system attacked by the residue of insecticides whenever they take a drink of nectar.
Likewise with butterflies. Gardeners do not like caterpillars, but everybody like butterflies and where would we be without them? In a much less attractive place, I am certain. Some species of wasps kill thousands of caterpillars. so, it is preferable to encourage them rather than kill the caterpillars yourself with a nuclear bomb of a chemical spray.
Some handy natural methods of controlling insects are by the use of washes that contain Neem, Tobacco or Pyrethrum. These natural remedies discourage them in small doses but will kill if used in a strong solution. Look out for products containing them and read the instructions carefully to see if they suit your needs. Borax will help control insect pests that eat their way around your house and so will corn flour.
There are many ways that people can be more selective when attacking insects. The main problem is that it is a lot easier to go buy a spray, but if you do some research, you will find plenty of ways of attacking insects with natural insecticides.
Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with indoor mosquito repellent. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Repellent For Dogs.
categories: insects,mosquitoes,home remedies,garden,house,health,hobbies,recreation,disease,flora,family,outdoor,other,uncategorised
Tags: disease, family, flora, Garden, Gardening Articles, health, hobbies, home remedies, house, insects, mosquitoes, outdoor, recreation, uncategorised
