Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for July 14, 2017

Looks like a centrifuge baby.

I’d pay good money for a baby-repelling bracelet. What would that smell like?

To Bugs: Resistance Is Futile.

This post is more than just repelling bugs. It repels other pests, too.’

Ants-Cayenne Pepper

You can also sprinkle a little cayenne pepper around the entrances to your home or directly onto the anthill (if you can find it).

Though they’re looking for sugar, the ants will get a spicy (and repellant) treat instead. If you do find the anthill, Household Hackers recommends dousing it with cayenne-laced boiling water in order to kill the ants inside.

Ants-Make A Borax-Sugar Trap

If you’ve got kids or pets, tread lightly with this tip, as sodium borate should be kept away from kids and animals. Household Hackers recommends mixing borax and sugar with enough water to create a syrupy paste that ants will love to eat and share with their friends.

Use a tupperware to house the mixture, poke a few holes in the top and sides, and let the ants come and go until the borax wipes out their colony.

Ants-Safeguard Your Space

Once you’ve rid your space of ants, you’ll want to be sure to erase any pheromones they may have left behind.

To do so, fill a spray bottle with a mixture of vinegar and water with a drop of dish soap. Then spray your mixture everywhere those little pests once lived, making sure to spray any entryways where they may have been entering as well.

Mice: I know—this sounds crazy. However, all you have to do is sprinkle some drops of Tabasco Sauce around the foundation of your house.

You can also add a couple teaspoons to a teaspoon of dish detergent and two cups of hot water. Then, spray the solution onto any areas where they can get in. Easy, right?

Also: cloves, garlic, cayenne pepper, peppermint, ammonia

Don’t get the ones that glow.

They will attract Ravers.

Praise Glob and pass the Amo.

Please read the instructions and warnings carefully before putting one of these on your baby. If it sounds too much like they’re trying to insure against a wrongful death lawsuit, forget it.

Spray on, spray off..

Insectifuge bracelets are really just neoprene o-rings inscribed with the legend, “trayless all-you-can-eat buffet is closed”, in insectese.

A Nursery is Sanity’s new weapon against a growing population of bugs. The Nurse said so.

The Bracelet Drawer’s Union Local of Greater Kansas City is NOT going to like this.

I enjoy watching ants carry Terro back to their nest. I can almost hear them singing, “Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to work we go…uh-oh!!” Admire the ant way of life:“Go to the ant, O sluggard, Observe her ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest.” Proverbs 6:6-8

And I will never forget those warm summer nights as a child, when it was too hot to sleep and there would always be mosquitoes whining quietly in my ear. Good times.

I will for purposes of argument assume “baby bracelets” means bracelets for babies and not bracelets that are themselves of diminutive size. These would be dangerous to babies who might perversely choose to teethe or suck on them.

Besides, they would have a limited radius of effectiveness, at best.

Brass Orchid remembers the mosquitoes that serenaded the hot summer nights of his childhood. I remember something much more insidious, and more recent. In my travelling days, I often quartered in a certain very hot country where the window screens might keep the mosquitoes out at night, but were of insufficiently-fine mesh to deter the midges, so tiny, so evil, that would buzz, bite, and torment me. Night in and night out, I kept a log of how many I managed to swat to death before I drifted of to a sweaty sleep of exhaustion. There are always more midges.

Hey hey, You you, get OFF® of my cloud..

no-see-ums!!!