Bug Managment

Now In flower (among others):
Gallinazo (Schizolobium parahyba)
Chapero (Lonchocarpus- one species)
Uruca (Trichilia hirta)

It’s dry season. Most of the gorgeous butterflies have gone up into the trees or morphed, and the annual bug invasion has begun. It’s war out there – especially whenever the seasons change. Dry season is when the bees get ornery. As our Swiss entomologist neighbor, Paul, will tell us, there are many, many species of bees and wasps. Many flowers are only pollinated by one particular species of bee, so all are needed for the great balance in the forest.

But how do we deal with the stinging bees and bugs that invade a bit too close to home? Well, first of all, if you ask our trusty entomologist neighbor about the bugs, he will tell us that the word ‘bug’ in English, refers to just one family of insects, according to a Scottish author. We can’t recall which family or what author because we were too busy laughing. But he was serious! Guess we all get serious when people make fun of what we do!

Obviously, I’m no specialist of entomology. I basically treat insects according to my relationship with them. They are fascinating to look at in the forest. And we treat the really awesome, rarely seen beetles (like the one I saw the other day that looked just like a bright, yellow VW-Bug) with reverence and respect. And there is nothing more entertaining than waking up one more morning and finding a huge, colorful, science-fiction like insect clinging to the window screen out on the terrace. Now that is something awesome to behold and out comes the camera. We rarely see insects inside the house because we have screened, sealed and basically barricaded the place up to anything that flies, creeps or crawls. This is important for life in the tropical forest! We have scorpions, snakes, and creepy crawlies you couldn’t even imagine, all of which belong outside of the house!

We do tolerate one exception to a bug invasion inside the house. When the ‘visitors’ come, we allow them to swarm into the house to clean the whole place out. After just one hour or so, they swarm on out and leave the place spotlessly clean. Who are they? You will have to ask our neighbor, Paul, for the species name but they are a type of marauding ant. There are millions of them constantly on the move, and they eat everything in their path – scorpions/spiders/bugs- they take them all! It’s a bit shocking at first and most newcomers to the tropics try to stop the onslaught by spraying the perimeter of their house with insecticide. That is effective but it’s a disservice to the ‘visitors’ and to themselves.

You don’t need to fumigate your house in the tropics because the ‘visitors’ will periodically do it for you. We’ve been at our neighbor’s when the ‘visitors’ interrupted our cocktails out on the terrace. Now picture this: here we are in heels and cocktail dresses, when suddenly, Gabi says – “The visitors have come!” We look at the edge of the terrace and see that it’s turning black from the millions of invading ants. So what do we do? We simply move our cocktails over to another terrace. Now keep in mind that in small, bungalow houses, you actually have to leave the premises for an hour or so until the ants have finished cleaning.

As I write this, we are remodeling the house out at El Tigre. You can imagine our interview with the architect. He asks: “What are the important features you would like for your home - a state-of-the-art kitchen? An open, rustic décor?” Our answer: “We want you to build us a fortress against bugs. No bug hiding places! We want a bug unfriendly house.”

The details of how our architect dealt with this will be left for another day- and no, he didn’t build us a moat. The house isn’t done yet, so we don’t know if it will actually be bug unfriendly, or, more to the topic, if the ‘visitors’ will even need to go in and clean out the house now and then. My best guess is probably, but hopefully not too often.

So that’s how we are attempting to deal with bugs in the home. We deal with the bugs out in the gardens and the stables very differently. It’s absurd to screen up the horse stables so we need a different tact. Basically, we require continuous vigilance to keep the creepy crawlies at bay. The barn cats kill snakes and just about anything else that moves. During the day, the chickens scratch their way through the horse stalls and out into the gardens, eating larvae. Everything else of nuisance we annihilate with a squirt bottle full of soapy water. Any kind of soap will do. We use cheap laundry detergent.

Got wasps building a nest on the stable eave? Spray them with soap. The wet ones fall and die and the others fly away.

Got little worms eating the passion flower leaves? Spray them with soap. They drop off and die.

We ignore most wasps and bees outside because they are just going about their business and not being a nuisance. We only use the soapy water if they move in too close and start, say, stinging our animals. Then we have to take them out.

Some bees do not like dry, windy weather. If a nest gets too aggressive and they start stinging our animals, we attach a kerosene lighted rag at the end of a huge bamboo pole and burn the nest after dark, when they’re all in there. This requires considerable skill so I wouldn’t recommend that you try this at home. We don’t want to burn down the tree with the bees!

We do have to concoct something special for horse biting flies – but that’s only a problem during a few months in the rainy season. Speaking of that, anybody know where I can get a cheap still in Costa Rica? Somebody who makes Guaro, maybe? I need to distill some citronella. Honest.