Last week, your humble correspondent just noticed something, and I might once again be the last person to know.
I’m seeing more and more WELL-CUT and EDGE-TRIMMED lawns FILLED with weeds, ESPECIALLY in those homes where the door is answered either by a well-to-do man in an ironed polo shirt, or a woman whose every hair is highlighted and in place. What’s odd is that until recently, these lawns looked like they were maintained by the grounds crew at Busch Stadium, criss-crossing diagonal stripes and all.
Somehow, word seems to have gone out that there is a crisis because of a shortage of weeds, which are a desperately needed part of the ecosystem. Without them there would be no bees to pollinate flowers, no mosquitoes to bite us, the oceans would heat-up to a full boil, plus other catastrophes — all of which just makes me want to let everyone else fight it out while we fix your toilets.
Which makes me a little hesitant to approach today’s topic of how to keep bugs and flies out of your house. Perhaps some of you believe that getting rid of bugs may throw off your in-home ecosystem. Or be concerned that “pests” are people, too, if I may use the p-word that some might find offensive.
But for those of you remaining readers who are willing to take the bold stand that, NO, you really do NOT want bugs and flies in your house, and you really don’t care if your neighbors think that makes you a bad person, we can offer some help on screens.
If you have a lot of bugs in your house, the FIRST thing to do is check your screens, particularly:
Are there any holes or tears in the screen mesh?
Have the edges of the screens pulled away from their frames?
If you have a screen covering just half of the window, is there a gap between the screen frame and the adjacent sash frame?
Are you missing a screen entirely?
Yep, Fix St Louis can handle ALL of the above problems, and keep these little critters out of your house.
The next question is whether you had the right screen mesh material in the first place to withstand holes and tears. As a rule, we prefer a good quality fiberglass material over aluminum because metals like aluminum don’t flex when something hits them, and their stiffness makes them susceptible to puncture. On the other hand, not all fiberglass is created equal, and we’ve seen some so thin that you can push a hole through it and tear it with a finger.
The large number of screen mesh varieties sitting on fully-stocked Home Depot shelves is enough to make a refugee from the old Soviet Union cry. They include clear (high see-through visibility), pet resistant, extra strength, small insect, and sun guard (blocks UV rays). Fix St Louis can help you select the screen type that’s right for you.
Time will tell, and only history will decide whether all of us will be looked back upon as intolerant, species-ist insect-o-phobes, who committed unspeakable atrocities against our fellow, defenseless planet-dwellers.
But you can only be judged in your own time. So for now, if you’d prefer not to have little creatures crawling all over your body and in your food, call Fix St Louis and we’ll screen them out.
Dr Steve
Fix St Louis