I tasted Honda’s spicy rodent-repelling tape and I will do it again (2021)

Interestingly, that very irritant is now the key to the widespread success of some pepper species by the way of a specific species of mammals.

Yep, you can get spicy bird food which completely eliminates squirrel, rat, rabbit, racoon, and other issues with your bird feeders:

https://order.wbu.com/shop/bird-food/hot-pepper

It's a game changer, it's the only bird food that I use now.

I find that it is an effective rat repellent - a neighbor has a rat colony they will not address - but while it was effective for squirrels at first, they seem to have gotten over it, and we now see them eating dropped seeds without any pause at all. I think the first generation never overcame it but now they do eat whatever the birds spill.

> Mammals, on the other hand, have teeth

Chewing is also an imperfect process. Mammals, and I can tell you this personally and with some disdain, sometimes pass seeds as well.

> found a chemical irritant that repels the mammals

Deer, and I can tell you this personally and with some disdain, seem to love peppers as much as we do. They're also harder to keep out of your yard.

Not a good deer repellant, though—at least for the mule deer around here. My mom once sprayed some plants she had to prevent the local pests from eating them, but instead, they just ate the plants anyway, and then proceeded to shit all over the yard everywhere.

It's wild to think that plants are engaged in this constant struggle to produce seeds that have an outer shell that is just strong enough not to be consistently dissolved in a bird's stomach but not so strong that they won't ever dissolve.

One one hand, some seeds must survive passing through the bird's digestive system intact to later grow into a plant, on the other hand, some seeds must be digested in order to keep the birds interested in consuming that seed... Alternatively, a bird species interested in eating indigestible seeds may become extinct due to malnutrition.

I can not remember the tree or plant and the following is only my best recollection and may be slightly incorrect, couldn't reach my dad to ask, he told me about a plant and I forget if it had basically been eradicated possibly to human harvesting and was unique to a region if I remember correctly and it was believed to be gone. But then some seeds were found and they tried to germinate them but continually failed. As I remember what he told me was that someone going through some ancient writings or paintings and it showed the tree and birds eating from it. He then said the person had the idea to feed the seed to a bird and see if it did anything. Apparently it was successful and he was able to grow this lost plant/tree what ever it was. The whole story sounds far fetched but my dad is not a bullshitter he would have seen it on some history channel or similar. Looking up birds eating seeds and germination explains that the digestive enzymes in a birds stomach can help break down the hard outer coating on some seeds helping germination. I will ask him when I can and report back if I can verify anything he said.

As for spicy peppers funny to me story. I grew a Carolina Reaper plant last summer and the plant did well and I got something like 200 peppers from it. Of course I had to know what it felt like so me my dad and my 13 year old son tried them. We all threw a big chunk in our mouths chewed for about 5 seconds and spat it out.

The pain was basically instant. It was at about 2 seconds I knew this was not going to be good. It was insanely hot which lasted about half an hour, the entire time me running my mouth under the tap or putting ice on it, trying crackers and milk, even tried to wash my tongue. Some how my son after about 5 minutes very calmly says can I go have a shower. He was hardly bothered by the pepper.

Funny thing happened couple weeks later. I was telling my friend how insane these peppers were. He then asks if he can have some as he has a bear knocking over his garbage every night and wants to leave some for the bear to eat and hopefully encourage it to stop. So he makes a burrito and fills it with 5 or 6 nice sized reapers and leaves it out before bed. Well middle of the night his phone dings and his outside camera detected motion. Fires up the video and what does he see, not the bear but some stray dog walking the neighborhood run up and down the thing in a couple bites. Oh man I hope that dog didn't suffer too bad when it came out the other end.

If the above comment was interesting to you... you might really like the YouTube video "The truth about Hot Ones sauces"! It goes into this theory, along with how spice levels are measured.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dutpBSKj8JY

It's like the opposite of clickbait. The author did, upon information and belief, taste Honda's spicy rodent-repelling tape, and made a strong case that she will in fact do it again unless someone stops her. Truly giving the people what they want.

"Honda never replied to my tweet."

I lost it when I read that, what a great post.

I disagree, it is unnecessarily verbose and seems to revolve around engagement.

[dead]

The cynic in me questions how much writing is enhanced with AI these days rather than being the authentic style of an author. Great read nonetheless…

Damn I could have gotten the "no fluff" version by looking at wikipedia or just googling.

Why do people expect their non-fiction reading to be entertaining? That's not the point and I inherently don't trust your judgement if that's what you're looking for. At some point you've got to provide insight.

Thank you for both links. I only read the linked article after following your links!

Thanks. I knew it was a reference. It was tugging on threads in the back of my brain. But I couldn't place it at all.

Thank you!

My version:

This is just to say

- quit fucking with that poem

I genuinely can’t remember having laughed at well written prose in a long time, thanks for sharing [0]. OP is gold too.

Takes me back to my high school days when I would have to choke down my laughter as I surreptitiously read Cracked.com articles in class

Reminded me of Dennis Lee too

[0] https://foodisstupid.substack.com/p/escargogurt

Reminded me a lot of Steve, Don't Eat It! (modulo twenty years of progress in being less deliberately over the top online):

https://web.archive.org/web/20180712104826/http://www.thesne...

In the same vein, this had me rolling https://cernius.substack.com/p/finger-lickin-good

Dave Barry was my favorite columnist as far back as age 8 or 9. He's so funny.

I have not laughed this hard in ages. I am in love with this author.

A genuine lol, for both the OP and for [0]

It's ridiculous, but maybe not the way you think; Prop 65 in California classified a lot of things as requiring notification, including things like "Wood Dust." so now every apartment building has a sign in the hallway that says "this building may contain chemicals" and everyone ignores it. The law has lead to people being less informed rather than more informed.

I remember when I first bought a knife either made in USA or just targeted at that market (not sure: I mean, I don't think it was the first thing I bought made by an USA company, but I've never seen that warning before), and found that warning inside the package I was quite puzzled, like WTF, I though I was buying a good knife, not some recycled hazardous waste-material or whatever this is. Then, of course, I googled and found out that they stick it on pretty much anything, so that plastic handle is probably just like any plastic handle of any knife I held before. But still it was very weird.

They're as silly as they sound. Growing up, there was a sign when you enter the school's bus storage and maintenance area. More recently, I've seen them at Starbucks (for coffee), in the vinegar section of the grocery store, and on untreated lumber.

This isn't California being California, but it is well-meaning legislation getting out-of-hand because of enforcement mechanisms. It's like website cookie warnings. It was a nice idea, but it lead to a silly place.

Whenever I see these warnings in the wild, I (jokingly... mostly) think to myself: "well I don't have to worry about getting cancer from this because I live in Texas now, not California"

Prop 65 is frequently joked about but at the time it was a resounding success. The drawback is that any item being sold in California that doesn't pay for the extensive testing (to confirm it doesn't contain any of the thousand chemicals on the list from 1985), ends up carrying the label that the item might cause cancer. If Wikipedia is too dry for you, there's a podcast that explains the history and facts well https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/warning-this-podcast-...

I once walked into a hospital that had a prop 65 warning on the door.

I caught that too, though I believe the California warnings are generally of the form "if you can't prove nothing in there causes cancer, then it might cause cancer."

Back in the day when I worked desktop support, we would use a lot of canned air. And when they added bitterant to that stuff in order to keep kids from huffing it, it became almost unusable for its intended purpose because it turns out that nobody wants to have to breathe the bitter air after they clean out a PC. So, I went to the office supply store and sampled some different brands to see which ones didn't add a bitterant. The irony that their anti-huffing measure led to me (essentially) huffing canned air at the store was not lost on me.

I found this out accidentally. I have a habit of holding the cartridge between my lips when I switch cartridges (my hands are occupied with the case). Then minutes later I'd notice a bitter taste when drinking water or licking my lips, and have no idea why!

Telling people not to do something is a sure fire way to get them to do it. Human curiosity is strong.

Well.... how did it taste?

Which in that case is Denatonium Benzoate.

The brand name is Bitrex. They send samples to parent groups to demonstrate why it's a good idea to put it on things kids might swallow.

Kindle charging cables were a favorite among some of my friends, for similar reasons.

<raises hand> .. It really was grim

> The only thing that really worked was sending so many rat reports to the city that they had to keep coming out to bait the burrows in the neighbors small yard, until they likely talked to the owner directly to do something about it.

I was recently deputized into the "Rat Pack" of New York City[1].

The main thing I learned is that exactly what you said is true. When there are rat problems, you have to go to the source. Traps/poison in a localized area is not going to work, as the brown rat is easily able to reproduce faster than we can kill them with those methods.

In fact, certain methods have ended up helping the rats. At one point the city put out thousands of boxes with poison in them. The problem is the boxes were designed to be nice and cozy for the rats, so they'd be tempted to go in and eat the poison. Instead, they go in there and mate. (They also use the boxes to evade predators).

NYC's current strategy is to improve data collection on rats, and then use that data to better enforce standards (like garbage disposal), eradicate burrows, and plant different shrubs that aren't as friendly to rats. You have to fully eliminate the environments that sustain them, you can't exterminate your way out.

Always report rat sightings in your area!

[1] https://www.nycservice.org/opportunity/a0TQq00000DwaIoMAJ/ny...

In one of my previous flats we had rats and mice which we ignored - my flatmate was jain so very live and let live - until one day I turned the cooker on and there was a huge bang - they'd gnawed off the insulation on the power cables.

I didn't know about chillies but it might have helped.

It's a big problem in old airplanes too. I've known a few pilots who found out their nav lights (on the wingtips) weren't working anymore because a mouse got inside the wing.

I had a Subaru that required over $1000 in labor replace a $13 master wiring harness that was chewed by a rodent.

Of course, nothing will beat having a rodent die somewhere in the engine, and not noticing it until exiting the car after a 45 minute highway ride and making my in-laws neighborhood smell like someone barbecued rotten meat.

I think are joking, but have to mention that Acetone is not expected to cause cancer, at this time.

Or, hear me out, their teeth have to grow because they like to chew so much they'd wear them down and starve

Unfun pet rat fact: if their teeth start growing at weird angles for whatever reason, this mechanism stops working and you have to get the teeth trimmed every couple weeks.

> If they don't wear down their teeth, they'll grow out of control and kill them.

cf the Babirusa - "If a male babirusa does not grind his tusks (achievable through regular activity), they can eventually keep growing and, rarely, penetrate the individual's skull."[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babirusa

To be fair, the biological mechanism for motivating behaviors is usually by making it rewarding.

They both have to and like to!