Door Draught Excluder

[FarmerPug]

i had a pigeon went into my old shed and just stood there, even let me take a picture of it (have it somewhere just cant find it), i actually had to put it out but it waddled back in.
Mice might have diseases but for diseases rats are the worst, they have that wiels diesease.
But i got the floor started, got some more plywood and started cutting (the measuring wasnt spot on so some gaps had to be filled)


a gap:

heres the stuff for keeping the bugs away:

[steve_earwig]

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Lyme-disea ... auses.aspx

[FarmerPug]

ticks i heard of them but never seen any my mum said something about a cat having one once they just sit there and suck blood. i got the dog an injection that is supposed to keep him clear of fleas and ticks for
a year and its a good job no fleas at all.
out in the countryside theres nothing but them infections we started back at cattle last summer and as soon as they went onto the grass they got wringworm, although being ireland your never far from some old man or woman who knows 'the cure'.

[steve_earwig]

Never seen a tick? I remember my dad taking them off the dogs with petrol when I was a lad. Our cats here generally get a few every year, the dogs occasionally, the technique is to grab them as close to the skin as possible (nails help), twist them clockwise and when you get to about a 1/4 of a turn give them a sharp pull. If you pull them straight off it can leave bits of them behind... My mate here lives further out in the sticks and it must be tick central out there because I've seen her pull 5 or 6 off her cat while we've been sitting having a chat. She's had 2 herself I guess it's only a matter of time...

Fleas don't seem to be much of a problem. Occasionally I see one on a cat but that's about all. I'll never forget one of the houses I looked at when I was first here in 2004, it had stood empty for about 10 years and was starting to fall to pieces. Cats had got in and had been living in it, and dying in it. We looked around the house with some kind of horrified fascination until we realised we were being eaten alive by fleas, which is when we left in something of a rush. It was a while before I felt clean again.

I'd like to know what injection can keep fleas & ticks off a cat for a year, my mate the vet has tried loads of different things - injections, drops, stuff you put on their food, but the only one that works effectively is Frontline, which is drops you put on their necks, it covers fleas for 3 months and ticks for one but it's expensive so we generally wait for the dogs to start scratching like loons or a tick or a flea to appear on one of the cats.

We get the occasional mouse in here, either the cats bring them in or they come in through an open window. Anyway the cats are useless at catching them once inside the house so it's up to muggins again. I've fly swatted a few but the most effective way of catching them seems to be mouse glue - I kid you not! You get a bit of cardboard, say about 6" square, put a lump of food in the middle (cheese, meat, whatever) and put a circle of this runny glue around it. Then you stick it out of the way, under the cupboards or behind a chair (there's one behind my couch right now but I think one of the cats must have actually caught it again for once) The mouse goes for the food, walks through the glue and gets stuck to it. The more they struggle the more they get stuck. They usually panic and start screaming, then all you do, well, all I do, is fold the cardboard in half, drop a brick on it & pop it in the bin. What, you want me to use poison?

The dogs occasionally present us with a dead (and slightly chewed) rat.

It's funny you're using ant powder on earwigs, I once used woodworm fluid on hornets - they had a nest on one of my window shutter boxes and I could hear them trying to chew through the wood to get into the house. So I figured an insect was an insect, got a spray can with a tube for spraying into woodworm flight holes, drilled a small hole into the box and sprayed it in there. After a few "applications" the noise died down. The next year I was up cleaning the gutters out and I saw they'd tried to make another nest on the outside of the window, using the easiest available building material - dead hornets.

What was it you were worrying about again?

[Welly]

Early wiggy?

I hate mice with a passion, they eat rubbish, eat each other, 'shed' hair and leave a continuous trail of sh*t and piss wherever they go. I 'got' a pair together in my office with some industrial spray adhesive once, I can still remember their screams

I like most animals though apart from rodents and flies.

[steve_earwig]

Yeah, well, I had a bit of a crappy night because some kind person hs given me a stinking cold to add to my troubles We had a nice early start though, I had to renew the prescription for a couple of my pills and our usual quack is on leave so we had to go see her replacement. We weren't sure of the deal there so got there at 6.55 ready for her to start at 7am, as it says on her door. She didn't bother showing up until 7.30 though, and didn't get to us until about 7.50 and that was just to tell us that the pills would be ready later today at the chemists, when she could be bothered to enter them onto the system And remember folks I can't stand up for too long, I can't sit down for more than about 10 minutes, I was not a happy bunny.

I've also bought some new shoes while we were out - seeing as how it was -4 this morning I don't think sandals are a good idea any more, so I've got some zippy-uppy booty things, not my cup of tea at all but I can't do laces...

Anyway, what were we blathering about? Ah yes, I thought it was rats that left a trail of piss everywhere they went. Perhaps it's mice too. I used to have a couple of rats, friendly little buggers they were. Word of warning: do not buy your kids any fwuffy ickle wodents - they only live a few years and generally die of something nasty and expensive.

[FarmerPug]

on the fleas have you ever seen a hedgehog its flea central in one of them i remember one
on our patio and the fleas danced round it, my mum felt sorry for it and put some flea powder on it.
wild rabbits seem to be another place for fleas

[steve_earwig]

If they're not dead with the mix

Loads of hedgehogs round here, I found a nest last year when I was sorting out the pallets we used to stack the wood on. The babies were rolled up into balls, they looked like big pink conkers I didn't see any fleas but they're well known for them so I didn't get too close. I rolled them into a shoe box with a stick, used the ash shovel to stick mum in there and hid it out the back by the veg garden under a load of leaves with a plate of dog food.

Now where did I put that bit of straw I was chewing?

[Welly]

Apparently Hens are covered in fleas?

We looked after a dog once (unknowingly) with fleas and all was good until about 10 days later one of the crafty fuckers even 'waited' in a trouser leg for that well-timed bite of a morn luckily we have wood floors so could pretty much see them all - they were everywhere, Lounge, stairs, bedrooms managed to get on top of it by being super-cleaners (vacuum and then dispose of the bags) and using' Dr Martin' sprays/powders but did have a pest man on standby at one point.

Did someone say 'big pink conkers'?

*waits for Puggy to arrive.........

[FarmerPug]

i dont see fleas on my hens, they get mites so you see them on a hot day shoveling dust round themselves.

[steve_earwig]

I think all birds do that, I just think it's something programmed in, rather than something they do when they itch.

did have a pest man on standby at one point.

I'd almost forgotten, in the mid-90s I was working in an office and there were fleas. There were 6 of us in there, I think I probably brought them in because I was living with a girl who worked in a vet's and my best pal and main drinking buddy worked in an inner city farm. Anyway, they left the rest of us alone and headed straight for the manager I was sitting opposite and he had so many bites on his legs it looked like a rash. He's the one that called in pest control and had the office fumigated. Thems were the days

When I was at school I remember the stigmata that was attached to anyone that had nits, I remember being checked for them but I don't remeber anyone having them. I'm told they're now increasingly common, my nephew has had them a few times, as well as worms - how do the kids pass worms about, do they fling poo at each other or something?

We looked after a dog once, this was when I was a lad, it was a little fat dog called "Taffy". It died in the night

[FarmerPug]

you can get ringworm just by touching a bar a cow scratched itself on.

[Welly]

Oh yes nits are a nightmare in Primary School, especially now as boys have long hair too we bought the mother-of-all nit combs and used plenty of conditioner to sort of 'slide' them out of my daughters hair (probably twice a month or more).

She's had worms too which was shocking we all had to take a tablet during that episode but it has only happened once. Poor hygiene is to blame but I wonder if it's not more to do with school staff not being allowed near the pupils for fear of being sued who's to tell whether little Jonny-wipe-your-arse has really washed his hands in hot water and cleanser after he's parked last night's home-made Lasagne

[FarmerPug]

back to the floor i got it finihsed last night, not done very well but that comes when using a 30cm ruler to join the dots and form a line. Its not really an issue if laminite goes over it:

[steve_earwig]

Laminate? I thought this was a shed not a gentlemen's drinking establishment