Stop bugging me

Everyone loves the tropics. There is an abundance of sunshine, food, parties and the conditions for easy love are there for the taking. I’m not talking tourists here. I am talking about the insects and vermin that cohabit with us in our luxury tropical homes, conspire to do us harm and threaten to undermine the very foundations of our lifestyles. The creatures that interrupt our sleep and carry disease; ticks, fleas, mice, bed bugs, termites, rats, bats, snakes and that most dreaded harbinger of death, the mosquito.

Depending on your politics there are various ways and means to take care of these critters; one being the ‘better living through chemistry’ DuPont model of poison sprays, which have proved to be a spectacular corporate faux pax, leaving pollution, environmental degradation and cancer in their wake. A more holistic solution, and one that is gaining more and more ground as people become more aware of preservation and balance is the use of mixtures of plant material and other naturally occurring minerals and ingredients to act as deterrents such as neem (a common plant found in tropical gardens), tobacco and sulfur.

Nyoman Artawan is a Balinese expert in the use of natural products in the control of unwanted pests and his client list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of hotels, homes and restaurants on the island. His approach isto use ingredients that occur naturally in the tropics, with no harmful synthetic chemicals. Plant extracts from the neem tree, liligundi flower, soursop leaves, coriander, chili, gumitir flowers and tobacco leaves, vinegar and shallots are a deterrent to most of the common pests found in the tropical heat.

Depending on which insects Nyoman has to treat, he uses different extracts mixed from these ingredients. The frequency of treatment depends on the insect population, and can differ from between twice a week to once a month. For larger critters he employs different methods. He uses traps or ultrasound devices to scare rodents away, an outline of sulfur in the garden to repel snakes, and sprays ceilings with a mixture of tiger balsam and water to keep bats at bay. Besides the treatments Nyoman also advises and trains the client’s staff how to avoid any breeding places for mosquitoes and how to maintain a garden properly to keep pests away.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, however, and there are simple steps that can be taken to reduce the problem even more.
- Keep rubbish bin areas clean and closed.
- Insert small insect-eating fish in your ponds or watery plants.
- Avoid any open stagnant water places.
- Clean and rinse your outdoor drainage regularly.
- Grow plants that naturally keep insects at bay, like liligundi, neem, lavender, and pyrethrum.

Stop bugging me Most importantly these products are safe, it’s only the pests that don’t like them. Pests do not develop immunity to the products, they are harmless to humans and pets, they don’t disrupt food chains by killing predators such as frogs, lizards and spiders and they may actually do your garden some good. After all, the chemicals we choose to synthesize mainly come from Mother Nature in the first place. Why not use her methods? She has been around a lot longer than us and knows her job well.