New hot chicks in town!
So I read the paper today and guess what it said? The eagle owls are back in town! Remember the one who lived practically next door to me and had regular concerts on top of a pine tree by the Hietaniemi beach (there are 2 churches on either side of my block, and the silly owl thought the towers were the hotspot of this city)? He actually turned out to be 2 birds, one with a preference to churchs, the other hanging out at the beach, probably wearing a floral-print shirt and drinking Mai Tais. In fact, instead of the 2 owl supposed to live in the Helsinki area, there were in total 8 of these beasts. Yes, eight.
Some of them even found love and formed couples, though only one couple managed to raise chicks. Sadly, my neighbour had to spent the year hooting all alone. I hope he's still here, and as the mating season is beginning, he'll start making himself noticed again. There must be plenty of fat rats around after the warm autumn and early winter so woo for urban rat-eating wildlife!
While the news about the invasion of the eagle owls was a good one, a couple of days back I got the news that my house will be fumigated as, apparently, there have been sightings of fur beetles. If this wasn't a public forum, where decorum should be maintained, I'd fill the next several lines with all the swearwords I know in all the languages I speak. I haven't had the courage to rummage through the closets and see if there's been any damage done. Stupid insects, eating cloth and causing trouble...
posted by sanna-mari @ 1:39 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Might I direct your attention to: http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/
Your one-stop shop for swearwords in any language you care to imagine. And then some.
Sorry to hear about your forthcoming fumigation... in the meantime, perhaps you could tempt your feathered neighbour down from his tower with a tasty fur beetle treat?
Thanks for the link! I shall try it out immediately. I any of my hand-stitched precious woolly babies are hurt I swear I'll go on a rampage.
I also thought about offering the beetles to the eagle owls, but I fear they might find it offensive and never show up again.
When our old apartment was under attack by the fur beetles, I didn't need to throw away as much as I was afraid of. I just washed _everything_, washable or not, and was enraged and disgusted by the idea that something as icky as a hurd of beetles was crawling in out stuff. Eeew.
The place was fumigated once or twice, but we still saw the odd beetle here and there years afterwards. The joys of living in an old, romantic, wooden house...
(Oh, and BTW, they don't necessarily make holes in your woollen clothes, just eat away the soft surface, and leave traces of their white chrysalises.)
U
Fur beetles! Those cursed creatures! We are in war. There is now way to escape them if you live in an old house in the city, or at least so it seems. Althought I´ve been anally obsessed with all beetlepreventives, they _always_ show up _everywhere_ at some point.
But there are some good tips (all of these are referred to as instant-friends in my household -if you share an enemy, you´re on my side):
* Use airtight storageboxes and vacuumbags. Vacuumbags are especially handy when packing you´re beloved handstitched woollen babies, takes a lot less room.
* Use red pinetree oil (?) to brush the corners of each storage box. Fur beetles _hate_ the smell of it, so they will avoid it if they can. It is also safe if you have animals or are pregnant, unlike the sprays you can get from the stores.
* The other smell the damned little crawlers hate is ink they use in newspapers. Sob if you have to store something, rather wrap it in newspaper then put in the plastic bag. Plastic bags create perfect conditions for them.
* You can refrigerate the suspicious stuff that is not washable. The eggs die after some point.
Some confort may also be got of the knowledge, that most of the fabrics and yarns you can get in Finland are protected, so that they don´t atract the things. It´s mainly handfelted stuff that gets eaten.
May the force be with you in this common war of ours, comrad!
;)
What better place to chat than SM's blog!
One eco-friendly hint I heard was hiding dried orange skins between your clothes. Nope, total BS. Doesn't work. In fact, the skins make cosy corners for the beetles to regroup and to reproduce.
st, how old do the newspapers have to be so that the ink doesn't stain the fabrics?
U
If the fabrics are not wet the ink should not stain. But to be honest, I never even considered that ;) I would think yesterday´s paper should do the trick.
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