I wrote this blog on Tuesday and only today posted it.  An update first.  My cut hand looks really good.  The swelling is gone and the butterfly bandages kept it closed.  I got real scared about the spider bite when it was realy hurting on Wednesday.  I put a new poltuice on it and by yesterday it was much better.  It had seemed to be getting bigger and by today it is almost closed and healed.  I still use the polutice and will until it completely closes.  Thanks for all your concerns and I am really fine. 

No I can't get insurance.  At my age it would cost more than my monthly income.  In 3 years I will qualify for old age insurance.  Medicaire... 

The deck is totally demolished now.  I have the lumber stacked up and the roofers are here today so I can't work outside.  Shingles and stuff flying around out there. 

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Tuesday I wrote:

Within minutes of each other I had 2 minor medical problems. I have been tearing down the old 20 foot by 30 foot deck. It is easier to build a deck than tear it down. Many of the screws have rusted and you have to saw each of them off and that is a hard job. Then when you get the plank off you still need to watch out for sharp edges from either the pulled out screws or sawed off ones. Each plank is 10 feet long and pretty heavy since it is all treated lumber. I am stacking them up about 100 feet away. Long walk with something weighing 50 pounds. Then you have the undercarriage of the deck and I have found a few places where that has been rotted away. This treated wood is supposed to last 50 years so I suspect my ex son in law did not use treated wood on the undercarriage. That would be his speed. I know the first 20 feet are treated under carriage lumber because I bought all that lumber about 10 years ago. He added on the last 10 feet later. So it is the last 10 feet that I believe is not treated and probably has termites. I have a contract with Terminex so I called my guy and he will be over later in the week to treat my house and yard anyway. He will know if it is termites.

I have been carefully watching for snakes. Lots of Water Moccasins around here and under the deck it is wet after the ran we had last week, In fact it is standing water. They tend to live under the deck and if we don’t bother them they don’t bother us. You just don’t reach your hand under there without first looking. There are 2 of them under there right now and I am not fooling with them. They were not my medical emergency. Not really an emergency but incident.

First I snagged my hand on a rusty screw and it tore an inch long slit in the side of my hand. Remember the board is about 50 pounds and I could not hang onto it when it slipped. Very dirty cut with lots of blood. I sat on the deck and injury number 2. Brown recluse spider bit my leg. He is a dead spider now. He is poisonous and whatever he injected into my skin will rot the skin. I cleaned both my leg and hand with lots of antibacterial soap. Now if I had insurance I would have jumped in the car and spent a few hours at the doctor’s office. No insurance and lots of survival gear here. I put ointment on the hand and bandaged it up. It would not stop bleeding so I went to the next step. I grabbed the wound with locking clamps and had 2 butterfly bandages. As soon as I stopped the flow of blood I sprayed on another antibacterial stuff, let it kinda dry and then squeezed on the 2 butterfly bandages.

I just can’t say enough about them. Fantastic little bandages that have tightened the cut and stopped the bleeding totally. They work as well as stitches and they don’t fall off. OK the more serious problem is the brown recluse spider bite. I had vermin in my leg as bad as a water moccasin would have provided. It started hurting right away. I had bought a powder for recluse bites many months ago after being bit by one in my sleep..

The Brown Recluse Solution (in a glass bottle)

• Echinacea
  • Powerful infection fighter and natural antibiotic.
  • Effective blood purifier
  • Supports the body against blood poisoning.
• Lobelia
  • Encourages the flow of oxygenated blood.
  • Long history of effective use on insect bites.
• Plantain -
  • Powerful astringent which works to contract the skin tissue.
  • Healing, antibiotic, and styptic effect on sores and wounds.
  • Some have reported good results on Brown Recluse bites using this herb alone.

When combined...

When combining the Brown Recluse Solution with the Advanced Adsorb Powder to produce a poultice, the result is a very effective, all natural cure. Well I I had all my powders mixed up in a glass jar and just added water to make a poultice.

That problem should be taken care of and I will not need to go get antibiotics for it.

I live in a sub tropical rainforest and there are lots of biting things here. Fire ants will actually eat you if you let them. They are meat eaters and we have mounds everywhere. Millions live in each mound. They are fast and efficient. They are up your pant leg before you know you are standing near a mound. Then they all start biting at once and more are crawling up you as you swat the ones already in place. You need to strip off your clothes immediately as you run away brushing off the ones on your skin. The pain only lasts about 10 minutes….thank God! They do not survive the washing machine and that is where your clothes end up after you shake them out. As you shake them out inevitably more find you but you need to shake out your clothes before dumping them in the washer. You can tell I have lots of experience with fire ants. I never saw a fire ant or a cock roach until I got to Texas. I can truthfully say I have no cockroaches in my house. I will get a flying tree roach in a few times a year and that happens when the door is open and usually you don’t know they are there until night. I hunt and release.

In my last house I had fire ants and in my last office I had fire ants. No cockroaches… just ants. It was a new house and on all 3 floors I had ants. I would poison them and that would last a month or so and then they were back. So every month I put fire ant poison in the carpeting. That house was totally carpeted and in my new house you might find a throw rug but no carpeting ever. If you spill something or leave crumbs the ants will know it and within a few days they found a way to get in your house.

If you are killing ants outside then you take a bar of lye soap and melt it in 5 gallons of water. You pour it all around the mound. After you circle the mound you kick the mound a few times to get all the ants out of their nest and ready for battle. You then pour the lye on them and you might even kill the queen ant. You must circle their mound or they get away. Another method is destroying their scent trail. Just before a rain, or in the early evening before the ants have gone underground for the night, dig up and scatter them. Fling them as far as you can, DOWNWIND. Their scent trails will be washed out by the rain or dew. Most of them will not find their way back. This may need to be repeated several times.

 Another thing you can do is begin the 3^rd world war. It seems that fire ants from different colonies do not get along. You can try putting this to your advantage by mixing up the ants from different mounds. Colonies can be eliminated, or at least, weakened, using this method. It should work, as long as the area you live in does not have multi-queen colonies. When there is only one queen, the fire ants are territorial and will fight invading ants.

Using a long handled shovel, take a shovel full from mound one and set it aside. Take a shovel full from mound two and place it where you removed the ants from mound one. Then take the ants you put aside and put them into mound two. If you have three colonies, you can do a three way mix. Watch what happens. You should see piles of dead ants in a few days.

If you have them in your house or office then you pretty much have to use a pesticide. I would sprinkle it on my carpeting and a few days later vacuum it. I would follow the ants back to their mound and kill the ones in the mound…but even with that in a few months they are back.

Well I took my break from my wounds and now I need to get back out there and tear up the deck.