This post comes from a conversation I had with a lighthouse keeper on my second trip to Bell Island. Yes, a real lighthouse keeper. How cool is that?
A “Newfie Screen Door” (his words, not mine) is a natural insect repellent that keeps pesky pests out of your house when it’s a nice day in St. John’s and you want to leave your door open. It mimics a wasps’ nest, so other wasps, bees, and flies will steer clear. The lighthouse keeper said it worked about 80% of the time, which is pretty good, I think. Of course, there aren’t that many bugs around in St. John’s, it being a rather windy city on a geographically isolated island in the North Atlantic Ocean, but this is how they do it here and it seems to work.
But it’s an experiment worth trying, especially considering the wasps’s nest in the eaves outside my bathroom window.
Take yourself a brown paper bag, like the ones you buy to put lunch in (unless you’re smart and you use re-usable lunch bags). I keep them on hand so I can roast red peppers in them. Mmm-mmm …
Squinch the top. For today, I have decreed that “squinch” is a word.And blow it up like a balloon.
If you have no sense of fun, you can fill it with crumpled paper. Obviously, I have a sense of fun.
For the record, I’m not in the habit of standing in front of mirrors, watching myself do things. There just happens to be a mirror in my kitchen (there are three, actually, all built into the walls), and I was standing at the window doing this and looked over. So there I am. Pretend for me that my hair looks good.
Tie the top with string. Maybe work in a pretty bow.
Hang it over your threshold. TADA. No more bugs inside. Or at least, 80% less bugs.I even put one up at my parents’ house too.