It was Ivory, in the garden, with a stone candle and a shingle….
Okay, confession time. Unlike TL, I don’t touch bugs. I have worked up to rolling those itty bitty sugar ants with my fingers and I did slap a fly with my hand yesterday, but my squealing icky-icky dance had TL laughing at me through the phone line.
So, when I saw this (excuse the fuzzy, please) on the squash…
…I scoured the yard for something with which to capture and bludgeon the infidel.
I scooped him into the candle with the shingle and covered him. Then I took him to the executioners pavement, shook him out, RE-COVERED him with the shingle (I hate the crunch), and pummeled him with the stone candle. Here’s the crime scene photo:
For other squeemish gardeners like myself, I also highly recommend scissors (to remove the leaf entirely) or my personal favorite…the dustbuster. I suppose any will work, but this is mine. I never go to the garden without one or the other. THEN I feed the squatters to the chickens.
Bwah-ha-ha!
Ivory
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I love it! If any of those sneaky non-rent-paying interlopers show up indoors, I just laugh and take one of my cats over and show them “Who’s Next on the Menu”! That’s a good way to get rid of bug, and entertain your cats!
Scissors are a very handy garden tool. I keep a pair slung on the end of some lattice so I can always get to them. They are especially good for the horn worms on tomatoes; I just cut the little suckers in half.
We garden organically so I’m no stranger to picking off bugs by hand, but that still made me kind of ill…like when dh squishes tomato horn worms. Blech…..
My son uses the Shop Vac for flies that plague them in the summer. They have one door where the flies seems to congregate in the evening and he goes there with the Shop Vac and sucks them up. Bye, Bye, Flies!
If you can stand to scoop them up, try dropping them into a lidded jar half-filled with rubbing alcohol, give them a good shake and they’re ‘goners.
Little children are exceptionally adept at catching these, especially when given incentives.
Glad I’m not the only one that can’t stand the ‘crunch.’ Our vacuum has been out for 2 weeks straight from an invasion of little black bugs… Gross! My hubby just laughs that I won’t even crunch them through a shoe. Oh well. That’s what vacuums are for. Must get a dustbuster for the garden though. Brilliant!
I hate the crunch also and have to make a weird loud noise to cover it up. You could also try to keep a lidded jar filled with soapy water with you. Then just knock them into it, I use a pair of long tweezers, and give a little shake and they drown. just empty into the compost pile when it gets icky.
OMG… what kind of freakishly ugly bug is that thing?? It is HUGE. I bet the chickens loved it. My chickens LOVE LOVE LOVE June bugs. When I feed them June bugs, I can just hear them saying “ooh, look ! The crunchy ones with the creamy filling!” Ha ha ha ha! I betcha which ever chicken of yours got this monster bug , was probably thinking the same thing!
Hi, I don’t know if is my blogger or yours…but your site does not update…I have
had the garlic entry on there since it originally posted…I don’t know if it is a glitch,
or nothing to worry about…and thought I would let you know…You are updating,but
it is not on blogger…
Have a great day.
Faith
It took me a few years, but I finally got over my “icks” about squishing those !@$#’s. But when there is an infestation, I sometimes get nauseated and can’t get them all. I do like scissors to just snip them in half and leave their mutilated bodies as a warning to their brothers and sisters.
@bridget–I hope I’ll come around. They still make me squeal, but much less than last year….
@Faith–when we moved hosts it died on Blogger. But if you cancel us and re-follow, it will update fine.
@JavaLady–I throw all the borer vines in there, they love tearing up those too. Mmmm, larvae.
@Jenniffer and Lindsay–women after my own heart. I did the soap water bucket, capped and putrified, last year. This year I haven’t had any squash bugs, just borers. But at my friend’s house, I had no bucket. I HATE the crunch. I make the noises to cover it up too and can’t squish bugs with my shoe either. Hubby laughs at me too.
@macaroni58–I never thought of getting the kids to do it! HA! And I like the alcohol idea. It has that disinfectant zing to it.
@Pat-HAHA! That’s just awesome. I got a shop vac at a garage sale this week….I can’t wait.
@Jennifer and TeresaR–EWWWWWWwwwwww…I haven’t had to kill horn worms yet. God help me.
@LisaPie–Nice. Wish I wasn’t allergic.
I’ve tried beer traps for slugs, but the homebrew was so bad that no slugs came near. However, last night I made a chocolate malt, and left the empty glass outside. When I found the glass this evening, there were at least a dozen earwigs crisped in the bottom. The results were overwhelmingly positive, but I still figured hypothesis checking was in order. All in the name of science…