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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Ants & how to make them go away

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  • From: yarrow@sfo.com
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Ants & how to make them go away
  • Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 21:57:21 -0700

At 9:34 AM -0500 8/1/07, mIEKAL aND wrote:
...invite any of you with brilliant or crackpot ideas about solutions to
join the discussion.

Have you tried "talking" to the ants about boundaries? I'm serious.

Some years (decades) ago I was living in an apartment where I saw one cockroach. I'd been reading J. Allen Boone's _Kinship with all life_ and Michael Roads's book about how he was able to garden in kangaroo/wallaby country. The previous owner could not have a garden, even behind a fence, because the critters would jump over and help themselves. Basically, he talked to the critters and told them that the garden inside the fence was his; they could have anything outside the fence, and he'd leave them alone; but if they ate anything inside the fence, he'd hunt them down. Then when he sold the property, he told the new owner about his "arrangement." The new owner thought he was bonkers, and was not able to have a garden because of predation.

So I tried "talking to" the cockroach: don't let me see you or any of your relatives, I said, and I won't bother you; if I do see you or yours in numbers or on a regular basis, I'll hunt you down. It worked! I didn't see another one until the week I was moving out.




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