From mgs23@pacbell.net Wed Aug 11 11:01:09 1999 Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 22:29:39 -0700 From: Misha To: SANET-mg Subject: Re: maggots Howdy, all-- Well, since I went ballistic on the need to control RATS in big-city compost heaps, I feel some compunction to respond to this one. :^) It's funny, but as soon as I saw the "Subject" line of this message and who it was from, I thought, "She's got em in her new composter." :^D >the compost seems to be doing well. but now i noticed this >morning as i opened the lid to peer in that there are >hundreds of maggots (i quess that's what they are) eating >the grapes and tomatoes that i tossed in the past few days. > the surface was boiling with them. Eeeek. i thought the >years growing up on the farm had cured me of a squeemish >stomach, but this made me a bit sick. White, squirming, about the size of a grain of rice, and, yes, "boiling." Sounds like some fly's larvae to me. Which is what maggots are. I've got goosebumps on my legs just thinking about it. Talk about ancient genetic memory. And no amount of experience can take it away. It's just there. >i know the advice was to mush everything up before it went >into the composter, but i haven't been doing that. should >i worry about all these squirming things? Only if you mind playing host to flies. OK, ready? Are you eating? Stop, or come back later to read this. Common house flies lay their eggs on rotting material--up to 100 per brood. These hatch out into maggots, which feed on the place they've hatched till they can become grown up flies. A fly can carry four million microbes that cause hepatitis, salmonella, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, tapeworm, hookworm, and more. Flies are major disease vectors in many parts of the world. They have sticky-pads on their feet (kinda like post-its), that let them walk surfaces at any angle. The glue picks up microbes and other substances from anything they land on. But here's more joy: they taste thru their feet. So they walk on everything to check it out. Kate's organic compost is the least of our worries. The fly that has just checked out (and tested the palatability of) the dog droppings on the lawn or the puddle of in the alley, and laid its eggs there to hatch and feast--well, you get my point--it goes on to check out and test the palatability of, say, your sandwich. Your drinking glass. Your apple. Or your organic compost for that matter. And just think: our high-chemical-control-inclined sistren and brethren, who spray the dickens out of fly-intensive places, give the resistant SuperFlies (no Richard Roundtree jokes, please) an opportunity to distribute those pesticides around with their busy little bodies. Here's more Fun Fly Facts that David Cronenberg didn't have to make up. They sponge their food up with a proboscis. But what about solid food, you ask. Easily taken care of: the fly regurgitates its saliva onto the food to liquefy it. Can you imagine what's in that drool? And, yes, they leave residues of that stuff around between meals. As well as their own droppings (flyspecks). A fly generation runs about a month, but in the course of a summer, a single fly can produce up to a dozen broods. Litters. Or whatever you'd call a mingle of maggots. And these are just plain old common house flies, the black ones. Green and blue bottle flies look for carrion. Then there are horseflies, and stable flies, which can bite thru fabric and leather (after all, horses wear horsehide). Mosquitoes, whom we all know well. Gnats and midges. All blood-suckers. But your maggots, Kate, in my experience of that part of the world, are probably houseflies and some bottle flies perhaps. First of all, trust your evolutionary revulsion and destroy the things. Scrape them off into a pail of scalding hot soapy water, with whatever words of karmic apology you consider called for, and Do Them In. I always liked the prayer that Russell Hoban had one of his characters utter in the novel /Riddley Walker/ during a boar hunt: "Your turn now, my turn later." The world doesn't need more flies. Or maggots. Or flies. Or maggots. Or--you get the picture. Next, when you add things to your compost, tuck them into the top third or so of what's there; this is easier as your heap gets fuller. Or if you compost grass clippings, leaves, shredded paper, etc., that can tuck the food wastes in. But flies in my experience are not drawn to composters as readily if wet and rotting foods aren't exposed. They beam in on the smell of putrefaction. This won't stop the flies from trying, but it may cut down on the number of those who do. I've learned thru various urban gardeners the trick of planting mint around the composter. Flies don't like mint. The next trick is to keep the mint from taking over your neighborhood, but you already know about that. Other things folks have planted near the composter: basil, tansy, marigolds, and suchlike scented herbs. Someone once suggested putting the composter next to the herb garden, but I wouldn't do that--I wouldn't want to encourage flies in stopping near the composter and landing on the herbs. I've also known folks who've used traditional herbal fly repellants around their composters, like pennyroyal, camphor, eucalyptus, or bay--hanging bruised leaves in clusters or applying dabs of oil to the outside of the composter. Also, encourage biodiversity: ants, frogs, toads, spiders, snakes, and birds will feast on maggots. You *could* try laying open the composter and seeing who comes to tidy up...but the maggots could just tuck away where they're not seen. I would think that a pet toad or snake would be a great idea. A garden-living pet, that is. Give them a down-low garden light near the composter, turn it on a few hours a night to provide a nice supply of bugs...but now I'm digressing into urban wild habitat.... If you find that flies are entirely out of control, you can put screen around your composter (I once ended up lining a compost bin with hardware cloth to control bees and flies). I personally think setting fly traps out (bottle traps baited with food or pheromone lures) is a good idea. People controlling flies in livestock areas have resorted to many, and sometimes desperate, measures. Some--like electric zappers, biological controls, flypaper, and pheromone traps--are environmentally more benign than others--like "no pest" strips, sprays, and ear tags. But if you've ever grappled with a dense hoard of flies in the summer--biting ones or not--you can understand why people were so excited about DDT when it came out. The knockdown-kill effect must have been stunning for folks to witness. Don't get me wrong: flies are recyclers, and maggots clean up a lot of stuff that we humans leave behind, etc. But like many city creatures (including humans), they have concentrated to the point where living with them is not only unpleasant, it can be dangerous. It's a tenuous balance we humans expect of nature in the very cities we've built to be colonies for a limited number of species. Without the usual checks and balances in place, you may have to assert control while working to increase biodiversity. Making cities more sustainable is big work. I can post some resources Friday if folks are interested. peace misha ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michele Gale-Sinex Communications manager Center for Integrated Ag Systems, UW-Madison http://www.wisc.edu UW voice mail: 608-262-8018 Home office: 415-504-6474 (504-MISH) Home office fax: Same as above, phone first for enabling ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Half of this game is ninety percent mental. --former Philadelphia Phillies manager Danny Ozark To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail