permaculture

[mIEKAL aND <dtv@mwt.net>]

David:

This is the first thing I tried before trying the boric acid, the  
aspartane, fire, pyganic & chickens... I talk to them all the time—in  
fact the other day I was telling them to get off my elderberries as I  
was harvesting them, right before a bunch of them crawled in my ear.

~mIEKAL


On Aug 1, 2007, at 11:57 PM, yarrow@sfo.com wrote:

> 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.