Tuesday, August 5, 2008

It's War.

This is the Enemy: The Squash Bug.

This is the location: My Garden.
As you can see they are breeding and moving very quickly! I want them all DEAD!

If you have never had to deal with squash bugs before, let me fill you in. They are the smelliest, most nasty garden bug I have ever seen. I came home from Utah last week and found my squash, all dead. My canteloupe trying very hard to survive. And I found THOUSANDS, and I really mean thousands, of these tiny nasty bugs and their offspring everywhere. Some have told me to just give up. Its the end of the 1st summer season here in Phoenix, but I have one canteloupe vine still very green, with many little budding canteloupe on it, and one near ready to pick. So I am fighting for them! The past three days I have spent filling jars full of these nasty bugs and pouring nasty chemicals on them and then leaving them in the sun to boil to death. Today, however I got tired of my hundreds of slow dying pests, so I plucked them off by the handfuls and stomped on them. And another interesting fact about these bugs, they let off the most horrific smell when stepped on, and turn into a greenish gel (some have been bright red, I've wondered if they were the breeding ones), almost like an alien for of some sort that turns into green goo when it dies. Amelia came over to me and said, "mommy, what are you doing?" and before I could come up with an answer, she said "are you dancing?" I said, "yes Amelia, I'm doing the squishing dance." She however, didn't want to join in my dance. If anyone out there knows of a better way to get rid of this nasty pest, please let me know. I did some brief research and found that NO pesticides will pennitrate to kill this one, basically everything I read said squish em till their dead. So that's what I have been doing. And anyone who knows me, knows that I am very squeemish about touching bugs of any kind. But like I said, THIS IS WAR!!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

may the best WOMAN!!! WIN :)

John and Laura said...

Wow! Such a brutal example for your children. I love it!

Good luck killing off the squishy bugs. Up here, our war is against moles and slugs. Yuck!

Kerri said...

I am impressed. What a yucky thing to have to do.