I bought 2 battery operated gopher eradicators - and guess what?
They actually WORK. I live on an acre and have had them pulling
up Petunias and who knows what else over here. These long, tube
shaped things cost about $35 at Costco, I highly recommend them!
Tara

In article ,
(Lacreta) wrote:

I bought 2 battery operated gopher eradicators - and guess what?
They actually WORK. I live on an acre and have had them pulling
up Petunias and who knows what else over here. These long, tube
shaped things cost about $35 at Costco, I highly recommend them!
Tara

This post promotes a "soundwave" device such as has been rigorously tested
by university horticultural extensions & found to have no effect on ANY of
the many animals the manufacturer would have us believe it chases off.
Worthless devices, no matter what hertz it promises, whether ultrasonic or
subsonic -- simply doesn't work. The further claim that the little cell
batteries last six months of continuous use also sounds fishy, but no
matter, the device itself is worthless.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming your good luck was
coincidental with the local gopher getting run over by a truck, & the
greater coincidence is that you have no previous gardening posting history
yet appear suddenly with a spam-tolerant hotmail account. I see you've
posted a little bit in the drummers' newsgroup so I'm taking a leap of
faith that you're NOT invested in the manufacture of worthless divices,
only that you got hoodwinked into buying one yourself. Although it's very
nice for you that you would feel like a satisfied customer, scientifically
there is no possibility of a connection between the device you bought &
the gopher -- unless you used it to bash the gopher in the brains. Often
gophers have a separate breeding territory, & leave during the mating
season. In which case, yours will be back, supposing the truck didn't
squish it while it was trying to cross the road.

REPOST: Pest Control Sound Devices Tested, Found Worthless

Ultrasonic & subsonic pest repellers claim they chase off spiders, ants,
mice, rats, gophers, moles, wasps, cockroaches, cats, crows, reptiles,
raccoons, deer, rabbits, mosquitos, moths, squirrels, dogs, tics, fleas,
bats, all flying insects...everything except visitors from outer space
who'll otherwise kidnap you & stick ultrasonic devices up your rear end.
And as one might well expect of anything that claims to be an all-purpose
fix, they don't actually work very well. If it really worked the rest of
the pest control industry would be bankrupt over night.

Some claim they are "laboratory tested" but that's sneaky, it sometimes
means they are tested in electrical labs to be sure they won't kill the
user with a shock, not for effectiveness. Another such product claims to
have been "award tested & proved" -- but what really does getting your
award tested mean? In this case it means some hack promoters gave them a
salesmanship award at some hoax-product dinner. All claims of scientific
"proof" that ultrasonic sound repels vermin tend to be from the sellers of
these products, without actual scientific citation, just mysterious vague
allusions to "independent laboratory" or "field tested." If one looks for
the opinions from US agriculture & pest control agencies, consumer
organizations, & university research facilities, the manufacturer claims
instantly evaporate.

As with most scams that are not quite actionable, there's always an iota
of truth that has been elaborated into a big lie, & when the Feds get
angry, the companies point to that eency weency truthful starting-place
for the lie. Interestingly enough most animals including insects do not
have a vastly different hearing range than do humans & anything that would
truly annoy small mammals, insects, or any other creature, would annoy
humans too. Most rodents do hear ultrasonic frequencies -- rats for
example are chittering to each other most of the time but we can hear only
about one-fourth of their noises & mostly only the "alarm" sounds they
make (i.e., the most frightening sounds for rats are the ones we hear; the
ultrasonic sounds are regarded as friendlier). If you point the device at
a mouse or a rat & turned it on suddenly, you'd startle the little shit &
it'd run off. But left on as a continuous repellant, it only takes a
rodent about thirty seconds to figure out a given sound is harmless. There
are ultrasonic sounds all around us all the time & creatures that CAN hear
outside the human range get used to it, period. This is why the huge body
of serious governmental & university pest control literature never
recommends ultrasound or subsonic devices, & frequently mentions them only
to note that a Rutgers University study proved they're worthless.

The consumer alert literature got so easily obtained that sellers of the
bogus ultrasonic devices actually began to USE the warnings to promote
their "far better" SUBsonic devices -- which have not been on the market
nearly so long, & came about strictly as a method of fooling new customers
who had become well informed that ultrasonic control devices don't work.

Well you know, a sucker is born every minute. And even in the face of
numerous studies there is ALWAYS going to be some bonehead dufus swearing
on a stack of Books of Mormon they turned one of these things on & forever
after their dog never scratched, the roses never got aphids, the bats fled
for the hills, the woodchucks keeled over dead, the neighbor dogs stopped
shitting in the yard, the squirrels stopped digging up bulbs, the
cockroaches bought airline tickets to Detroit, & the mice lined up & did
the cha-cha-cha all the way to Argentina.

Here are some uninvested opinions of sound-repellents, this one from
Washington State University, by a professor & research scientist with a
specialty in vertebrate pest control:
http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublicatio...63/eb1663.html
with a typical sentence being: "Ultrasonics & recently subsonics have been
tested extensively in the laboratory & field. These devices don't work."

Or this Horticulture & Pest Management page quoting a press release about
the FTC's warnings to 60 manufacturers of these bogus devices:
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/ipm/hortn...ltrasonic.html
A typical fragment: "any reaction by rodents to ultrasound would be
temporary at best because rodents become accustomed to ultrasound and will
return to their nesting or feeding areas even in the presence of an
ultrasonic device. Furthermore, previous FTC complaints alleged that
ultrasound devices do not control insects."

Despite that these devices are known to be bogus FTC will never shut down
the flimflamming purveyors thereof. FTC can only force the purveyors of
these worthless gadgets to be slicker in the precise wording of their
claims. Remember even the milk industry was instructed by the FTC to stop
claiming "Every Body needs milk" because it is a lie, but they were
afterward permitted to claim, "Milk has something for everybody," even if
the "something" is hives & vomiting spells. Also, though the BOXES these
faux devices come in usually will be written in the sort of no-promises
double-speak that will evade FTC wrath, the constitutional right of a free
press means these companies can write any old lie they please in an
article or pamphlet or on the web where it is not directly attached to the
box, & so can pass as opinion or editorial rather than as the false
advertising it really is.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

In article ,
(Lacreta) wrote:

I bought 2 battery operated gopher eradicators - and guess what?
They actually WORK. I live on an acre and have had them pulling
up Petunias and who knows what else over here. These long, tube
shaped things cost about $35 at Costco, I highly recommend them!
Tara

Well crap, I dunno if I should take back my sentiment that I would assume
you're not spamming merely because you have a spam-tolerant hotmail
account & no previous garden posts as lucreta8. I see that from a
different account ) you were already informed in
this group, in June 2002, the product you are interested in doesn't work.

Though I wonder why the heck you'd spend a year dwelling on a product
you've already been informed doesn't work, I'm still going with the idea
that you experienced a coincidence & got excited by it fully believing the
bogus product helped you, as I just read a half dozen of your old-acount
posts on schizophrenia & a couple of your new-account posts on drumming, &
you seem on the level.

But those sound devices for scaring off rodents still don't work.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

Well crap, I dunno if I should take back my sentiment that I would assume
you're not spamming merely because you have a spam-tolerant hotmail
account & no previous garden posts as lucreta8. I see that from a
different account ) you were already informed in
this group, in June 2002, the product you are interested in doesn't work.


Yes, I was/ And they were so cheap I thought I would buy one anyway.
and, believe it or not the thing is working. I've had the 2 in teh
ground for about a month now and have planted many flowering plants
around the area of one of them. I'll be darned if it isn't working.




Though I wonder why the heck you'd spend a year dwelling on a product
you've already been informed doesn't work, I'm still going with the idea
that you experienced a coincidence & got excited by it fully believing the
bogus product helped you, as I just read a half dozen of your old-acount
posts on schizophrenia & a couple of your new-account posts on drumming, &
you seem on the level.



I got the hot mail acct due to being inundated with junk mail. And yes,
I'm a drummer too. Not to mention that I work with mentally ill folks.



But those sound devices for scaring off rodents still don't work.

Well It's working for my yard in central cal. coast. btw, nice looking
web page. Sorry you thouhgt I was some company promoter. Thet take D
Batteries also, not some cell type.