Question by CindyLou Who from Whoville:
What else is the purpose of Fleas, Ticks and Bed Bugs besides making us or our pets miserable?
If they did something “useful” like eat crabgrass or weeds in the yard, or if they ate house spiders, silverfish, nats, flys, ants…..it’s kind of pathetic.
What is your opinions, thoughts and experiences with these pests. My mother told me that her mom use to brush the wood bed slats with egg whites and that kept the Bed Bugs away. She did this at the end of winter into early spring. Have you heard anything like that??
Best answer:
Answer by mswnana
So that birds or other animals can eat them, I suppose.
I read where bedbugs were transported from one place to another from people traveling, sleeping in motels, and bringing their bags into their house or somebody else’s house mostly. I have never had any and have never heard of egg whites keeping them away. Older people, though, did a lot of things which seemed to help, and my mother knew how to use plantain leaves to draw infection from a wound, and teas that would cure anything.
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Guinea chickens will eat ticks and are good to keep in the yard/acreage if they are allowed and you can stand their noise and habit of roosting on top of the house or in the trees all night, the only thing I know is that bugs are part of the food chain, apparently something eats them but not quick enough to suit me.
My grandmother used a feather and kerosene to keep the bedbugs at bay, she would wipe it through the floor boards and between the wooden boards on the walls. That must have smelled nice. She also put the legs of the beds in something to keep the scorpions from crawling up into the bed, it might have been kerosene, I don’t remember the whole story. She lived during the Depression in rural Kansas and Oklahoma.
When I was growing up on the farm we never heard of lice or bedbugs (even though we played the game Cootie), apparently the DDT that we dusted around kept them away.
Never heard of the egg whites but just good cleaning was the best solution. I think our world is getting more and more crowded and the pests that live off our body waste will increase with it. yuk.
I got rid of the ticks quickly but bedbugs everything was in the dumpster and everything else has to be cleaned for days and covered with plastic I hate bed bugs I never got bitten but family member did and it wasn’t a good feeling
Okay, I cannot speak for bedbugs or ticks, but fleas have been and are being closely studied for ways to make better leg prostheses for amputees. Have you seen those bouncy running stilt type things that people with and without legs use? These were developed from fleas and their incredible ability to leap. Their joints are being studied for ways to make better hip and knee replacements.
Um….. those aren’t bugs…. those are Congressman and Senators….
They’re here to ‘ bug ‘ you and ‘ tick ‘ you off, which they are apparently doing. And stay out those ‘ flea ‘ markets, ya hear?
The only thought that comes to mind is, it`s natures way of telling us we need to be cleaner than we are. Bathe the pets more often and wash the linens, replace the mattresses all more often. Other than that, who knows?
There’s really no reason for your assumption that there’s a reason they exist. Anything that comes to be will continue to exist until there’s a reason for it to cease to exist. There’s no biological reason for any of them to stop existing, so they keep existing.
anything brushed with egg anything would smell, wouldn’t it?
Every animal has a preditor. I haven’t figured out which is for the bugs you mentioned though. Maybe it’s us. Maybe instead of killing them with bug spray we’re supposed to cook and eat them. I’m wondering that since “Off” keeps mosquitoes away maybe there could be a fragrant soap we could use and it would keep those bugs away from us and we could wash our clothes in that soap too, and the stuffing in mattresses could have that same smell to deter bugs. Didn’t cedar used to keep some bugs away?
All I know is that when I use Advantage on my pet she licks it all off and then gets sick. I used to fog my apartment, now I flea spray the hallway and bug spray the wall and rug on the outside of my apartment and I no longer wear slacks with cuffs, I keep my pet indoors and on the second floor, and I use plastic bags from the store instead of paper bags. I used to bug spray the window screens. So far have not had “the bugs”, although I admit that all pets harbor at least a few fleas.
Today the tv announcer said the bedbugs are coming in on airlines and are being brought in from other countries.