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moth
Dec 15, 2009 17:36:47 GMT -10
Post by unclemasa on Dec 15, 2009 17:36:47 GMT -10
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moth
Dec 15, 2009 20:46:37 GMT -10
Post by dvg on Dec 15, 2009 20:46:37 GMT -10
A couple of succulent morsels, to be sure...but the moth seems to have escaped...at least from my viewpoint.
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moth
Dec 16, 2009 3:56:40 GMT -10
Post by walterg on Dec 16, 2009 3:56:40 GMT -10
DVG,
Things are different in Hawaii's tropical climate. Centipedes are huge and snuggle up to you in bed at night, cats chase mongooses (mongeese?), and moths have stingers.
Seriously, I had the immense pleasure of feeding many yellowjacket hornets to my plants this past summer. They had nested inside the walls at both ends of my house, so I hung a trap that attracted them with scent, then drowned them in water, not unlike a pitcher plant. I caught thousands of the yummy yellow bastards.
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moth
Dec 16, 2009 4:13:16 GMT -10
Post by dvg on Dec 16, 2009 4:13:16 GMT -10
Walterg, Haha, I see that I'm not the only one out there feeding them to my plants. I still have a bunch of them in a jar stored in the freezer. I was able to catch quite a few later on in the autumn once the cooler air had slowed them down somewhat. With an empty 500 mL water bottle, I'd plunk the open end down over them, once they had landed, and they would then fly up into the bottle. As long as the upside down bottle is pointed towards the sun, the hornets will fly towards the closed end and the sun. Once I caught each new hornet, I'd just put the cap back on the bottle again. A dozen of them can be caught at a time with this method...and no I didn't get stung.
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moth
Dec 16, 2009 8:01:05 GMT -10
Post by walterg on Dec 16, 2009 8:01:05 GMT -10
Another fun and exciting thing to do with yellowjackets (which technically are wasps, not hornets) is to fill their underground nests with gasoline in the cool hours of the night and ignite them. In this way I discovered that the nests can cover huge areas, several times larger than the 10 feet I backed away from the hole before tossing the match. For a second or two I thought than Madame Pele' had come to visit me. I'm lucky that I didn't get my toes burned off.
Don't try this at home, kids. Seriously.
In many communities you can actually find someone who vacuums them out of the ground for free and sells them to laboratories where they do useful things with the venom.
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moth
Dec 16, 2009 8:11:59 GMT -10
Post by rsivertsen on Dec 16, 2009 8:11:59 GMT -10
I saw a documentary recently on one of the PBS stations about someone in the Hawaiian islands going around to destroy the various yellow jacket nests that have invaded the islands and are wreaking havoc with the native insect populations. They claim to remove an average of over 50 nests each year! They have decimated populations of wild bees and other insects. - Rich
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moth
Dec 16, 2009 16:36:20 GMT -10
Post by dvg on Dec 16, 2009 16:36:20 GMT -10
Yeah, gasoline and fire for insect removal, what guy couldn't resist that combo? But glad to hear that you came out of that exchange on the fairer side of extra-crispy. And fair warning to the kids: a lilttle respect has to bee given to gasoline, 'cuzz it can surprise you. I saw a documentary recently on one of the PBS stations about someone in the Hawaiian islands going around to destroy the various yellow jacket nests that have invaded the islands and are wreaking havoc with the native insect populations. They claim to remove an average of over 50 nests each year! They have decimated populations of wild bees and other insects. - Rich Now that's an interesting occupation. Professional Wasp Wrangler is not exaltly a run of-the-mill job description. I wonder what the job qualifications are? I can only guess...... ;D
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moth
Dec 16, 2009 18:56:22 GMT -10
Post by walterg on Dec 16, 2009 18:56:22 GMT -10
My pyromaniacal childhood notwithstanding, after twenty-odd years of farm tractor maintenance and repair, I have learned to be respectful of gasoline. It is very, very dangerous stuff.
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moth
Dec 16, 2009 20:23:42 GMT -10
Post by leilani on Dec 16, 2009 20:23:42 GMT -10
Many years ago in California I had a friend, a potential Darwin Award winner , who found his suburban back yard riddled with gofer tunnels. Always one for a "bigger bang" he took his torch from the garage and pumped the gofer holes full of Acetylene gas ...... The ground shook and flared and just like that .... no more gofers. ;D On the down side ..... he underestimated the extend of the gofer network and never considered that it might extend beneath his house. Fortunately, his house did not burn down but he did blow all the lower cabinets in his kitchen apart.
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kain
Insignes
Posts: 144
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moth
Dec 17, 2009 16:35:52 GMT -10
Post by kain on Dec 17, 2009 16:35:52 GMT -10
Can anyone tell me why I'm getting a flash of Bill Murray in "Caddyshack"? rsivertsen: Wasn't there an invasive predatory snail some years ago that wiped out a whole bunch of native Hawai'ian land snails? That just sucks. Invasive species events happen anyway, but humanity's doings have upped the rate to ridiculous levels.
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moth
Dec 17, 2009 19:45:38 GMT -10
Post by leilani on Dec 17, 2009 19:45:38 GMT -10
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moth
Dec 18, 2009 15:49:03 GMT -10
Post by shawnintland on Dec 18, 2009 15:49:03 GMT -10
Maybe it's time to change the title of this thread? Here's an interseting visitor to my neps. I have been wondering how and why I seem to keep finding big preying mantisii (?) inside my shade houses and how they manage to get in. Yesterday I got an answer to the 'why' part. I video taped this guy/gal sucking up the nectar from a couple pitcher peristomes and lids. They have a very efficient mouth and moved along one rib at a time all the way around the peristome before moving up to the lid glands! Unfortunately, the videos are something like 77 MB each and I don't have a you-tube account/experience...any hints are welcome, PM me. ;D ~Shawn
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kain
Insignes
Posts: 144
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moth
Dec 18, 2009 18:29:58 GMT -10
Post by kain on Dec 18, 2009 18:29:58 GMT -10
Very, very cool pics, Shawn. Any of the mantids ever get caught?
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moth
Dec 18, 2009 21:38:27 GMT -10
Post by shawnintland on Dec 18, 2009 21:38:27 GMT -10
So far I have never seen one caught in any of the pitchers. Watching this one yesterday I was wondering about it as he/she was going 'over the rim' to get at nectar on the underside of the peristome. They seem to be so large that there are always a couple legs on the outside as a safety line. Very, very cool pics, Shawn. Any of the mantids ever get caught?
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