While I cannot resist the pleasures of feeding my birds the whole year, I am aware that many people feed them only in the winter. Without a calendar, I could tell winter was here by the increasing number of phone calls I get about birds.
Several have called about bird-seed moths. I hate the things. I think we draw to ourselves things we intensely love, but I also think we attract things we intensely hate. Physics will someday explain it as some kind of energy phenomenon. All I know is that it’s true.
One little moth in the room can drive me crazy. I cannot concentrate on anything until I rid the planet of it.
When my sister lived in Florida, I sent her a blow-by-blow taped account of my first fly chase in the spring (I will do anything to make my sister laugh). I dove across my desk to kill one and almost broke my neck. I decided I was getting too old for fly-hunting. I am so glad I had not had an infestation of bird-seed moths at that time, or I would have killed my fool self.
Fortunately, I am no longer dependent on a rolled-up magazine. I have an electronic swatter!
It looks like a tennis racket with its gridwork, but it has a battery and a little button you punch when you swat. It fries them in midair, just like the electronic lights you see in low-dollar restaurants. I love it. It imparts a feeling of great power.
I have seen them in many catalogs like Walter Drake and Harriet Carter. Buy you one, and you will never feel like a pitiful weakling again.
On days when I am on the warpath, I have killed a dozen or more moths. But prevention is much more important than mass murder. They have an affinity for any kind of grain, so make sure your grains and cereals are in air-tight containers. To my amazement, I discovered a colony of the little rascals in a plastic bag of walnuts the other day.
It all starts with moth eggs in the bird seed we buy, and they hatch out in our homes. Even if you store your seed in a cold area, they will probably hatch out on a warm day.
Since I started shopping at Publix near the Wild Birds Unlimited store, it is now convenient for me to drop in and buy 5-pound bags of seeds to store in the freezer. It’s hard for anything to hatch out when stored in a freezer, which makes me wonder why there are so many Eskimos.
You can buy moth traps at WBU, and they work very well. They are essentially glue traps with a little hormone chip that draws them in. I keep one in every room where I see a moth.
My powerful aversion to these pestersome flutterers has tested my devotion to bird-feeding. I hate them so bad my sister says I may never go to heaven. So if you want to run into me on the streets of gold, let me know any preventive or corrective measures you come up with. United we stand, and divided we will just be flitted away.
E-mail Dalton Roberts at DownhomeP@aol.com.