(This is a sponsored post, all words and enthusiasm are completely my own)
Here is sunny Queensland, there are all manner of weird and wonderful insects, some I had never heard of until we moved from Sydney. Soon after we arrived, I was chatting to our lovely neighbour over the fence. Huh, she said in a matter of fact voice. There is a bright purple bull ant climbing up my leg. Oh, it's just bitten me. I'd better go, I've got chills running up and down my leg.
What a freakish ant, I thought, although I was impressed with my neighbours sangfroid in the face of it's bite. I was soon to learn that although purple ants where rare, green ants are not - being bitten by a green ant is like being burnt with a cigar. No exaggeration.
One day when The Gentleman was quite small, he was stung by a colourful, strange looking wasp. He was a trouper and recovered very quickly, but we discovered these weird, banded wasps had nests hidden away all over the yard. I discovered a few giant beetles, half the size of your palm, who hissed if they didn't like you. Luckily we don't have cockroaches, apart from the odd stray massive bush cockie, who flies in for a bit of excitement occasionally. One thing I certainly DO NOT miss from Sydney, is the Huntsman Spider. There doesn't seem to be many around, they have probably been eaten by the ants and wasps.
So, live and learn. We've learnt that you don't roll around on the grass, unless you want to be bitten. We learnt how to get rid of wasp nests and eventually they didn't come back, that variety anyway. I've learnt that midges (that I thought only existed in Famous Five books) love my sweet, sweet diabetic blood unless I take a daily B1 to ruin the taste for (most) of them. I don't bother the beetles and they don't bother me. Also, I am training a small army of geckos to help out on the ant front.
There isn't much we can do about mosquitoes and flies, though. To make matters worse, in our half renovated house, the back fly-screen door won't even stay fastened, so it is an open invitation to these two bastards! In a country where waving a fly away is called 'The Australian Salute' this is a problem. Why don't we fix our screen door? Because, we plan to build a deck on the side of the house, and the backdoor situation will become a french door off the kitchen onto the planned deck, and we don't want to waste money replacing a screen door that will soon be obsolete. This makes perfect financial sense, to flies anyway.
I'm telling you all this because RAID have asked me to review their Automatic Advanced Insect Control System over the course of a month. The unit comes in a plain white container, and can be set to either 12 hour or 24 hour protection. It comes with a bracket so you can fasten it onto the wall if you like. We've had 2 up for a week, and so far, VERY IMPRESSED!
There is one upstairs sitting on top of the fridge, and it is set to 24 hours, so it lets out a tiny hiss of odourless insect repellent every 15 minutes. It is angled away from the kitchen to cross the back door, and provide an invisible door bitch service to all flying insects, and it is doing a wonderful job!
Downstairs, we don't even have fly-screens on the doors and the area is completely open, although uninhabited for most of the day. The RAID unit sits on top of an old wardrobe, and is set to 12 hours so it goes for the afternoon and evening only. So far it has kept the room completely free of the usual insect disco - no flies, mosquitoes, dragonflies, or any other weird thing I don't know the name of! Maybe they are there during the day (I wouldn't know) but they bugger off quickly when the sun starts to go down.
So far, we are very happy with the RAID Automatic Advanced Insect Control System, but I will keep you up to date as we get further on into the month.
Are flying insects a problem for your house? What is the weirdest insect you've encountered?
xx