Ecology Center

When I was a child in the early 1960s, my favorite commercials were for Juicy Fruit Gum and Raid. The Juicy Fruit Gum commercials had a fabulous special effect. The jingle began, "Stretch your coffee break," and as the singers lingered on the word "stretch," a cup of coffee, a real one, would appear to stretch onscreen.

The Raid commercials, though, were even better, and my brother and I would run for the TV whenever we heard one begin. They were cartoons with characters and a plot, like watching Bugs Bunny and Bullwinkle on a weekday, long before cable made such a treat common. In the commercials, the bugs would always be planning some devious way to invade human domains, and then one of them would scream, "Raid!", as a cartoon can of Raid appeared, looming over the tiny insects, pressing the button on top of its head with its muscular arms, and releasing its spray of salvation as the bugs died in all sorts of funny cartoon ways.

Although, I didn’t know it at the time, the word "Raid," with its connotations of Prohibition, made the mighty can a sort of Eliot Ness, representation of law and order, with the bugs playing Al Capone and his henchmen. Clearly, Raid was the good guy, and the bugs were the bad guys. After the evil bugs met their demise, the announcer would say in a deep voice, "Raid. Kills Bugs Dead," as if merely killing bugs were not enough, as if the bugs had to be doubly killed, killed and dead.

Around the time my brother and I were listening for Raid commercials, Rachel Carson was writing Silent Spring, the first book to bring widespread attention to the damage, actual and potential, caused by our nation’s virtually indiscriminate use of pesticides. With meticulous research, Carson showed that pesticides killed not just the bugs humans called pests, but also the so-called beneficial insects, and birds and fish and human beings.

"Can anyone believe it is possible," asked Carson, "to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?" Our folly was, and unfortunately often still is, in believing that we could somehow kill bugs dead without killing ourselves and our planet.

Now, almost forty years after Carson’s book was published, humans have developed chemical insecticides that are far stronger and much more harmful than those Carson studied. We are fortunate to have dedicated people working toward the elimination of harmful chemicals, including insecticides, but even the most optimistic admit that, if this is possible, it will take a very long time. In the meantime, we as individuals can take our own steps, reducing the demand for harmful chemicals by refusing to poison our own homes and gardens.

In this country, most assume insects are bad. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves to what extent can we simply live with these tiny creatures? After all, humans have lived with insects for millions of years, and the idea that we must completely eliminate those we call pests from our lives is fairly recent and largely the invention of commercial interests. My grandfather grew up in a house with a dirt floor, and I’m sure his mother considered insects in the house a part of life.

In Sweeping Changes, a book about housekeeping as spiritual practice, Gary Thorp writes about the morning he saw a line of tiny ants entering his radio. Thorp knew that he could easily kill the ants, but he remembered his failed childhood attempts to keep ant farms. Since the ants were not near food and posed no health hazard, he decided to observe them instead, even experimenting with different radio stations to see if that would alter their behavior (it didn’t). When they suddenly disappeared, he felt a sense of loss. "I missed their companionship, their industry, their purpose, and their independence," he writes. Because he chose to learn from the insects, Thorp was enriched by his contact with them.

Sometimes, of course, we can’t or don’t want to live with insects, as I discovered when some enterprising bees chose my barbecue grill for a hive. But even if we decide we can’t live with ants in the radio or spiders in the corner, we may, for religious or other reasons, choose not to harm them. A single insect or spider in the house can be captured and taken outside. An infestation may pose more of a problem.

Fortunately, there are ways to remove insects without killing them. Roaches can be discouraged with bay leaves, cucumbers, and garlic. Ants will often stay away from damp coffee grounds, paprika, and dried peppermint. It’s important to realize, however, that unlike harsh chemicals, such methods of insect control may require some time and a willingness to experiment. Your first attempts to discourage insects may fail.

Of course, many people have no ethical problems with killing bugs, as long as we can do so without poisoning the earth. In this case, there is the time-honored cheap and organic method of squashing them. In recent years, many people have resorted to so-called bug zappers outdoors, but these now raise health concerns, and I think many will agree with me that the sound of crickets on a summer evening is preferable to that of exploding bugs.

Encouraging bats is a better solution. A single bat can eat as many as 600 mosquitoes in an hour, and bat houses are widely available. For specific problems, numerous books suggest homemade solutions - a soap or red pepper solution sprayed on leaves will discourage some insects and a shallow container of beer level with the ground will attract slugs, who, being no more intelligent than humans, will crawl into the beer and drown.

There are also commercial organic solutions for insect control available at stores in town and on-line. It’s important to remember, though, that the word organic does not mean harmless. I visited a local garden store to get an idea of what organic pest remedies are available and found from reading the warning labels that most of the organic products I saw are highly toxic to aquatic life, and many are harmful for humans and other animals as well. So find a source you can trust, then read labels and ask questions. And remember that natural organic hemlock will still kill you.

In Silent Spring, Carson wrote, "If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem." For us, that ‘problem’ is here, and as long as our government doesn’t always protect us, we can at least act in our own homes to insure that it is only bugs that Raid kills dead.

Clare Cross is an Ann Arbor writer.

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