Let's Learn English! Topic: Pests! 🦟🐭🐜 (Lesson Only)

Well hello everyone and welcome to this English lesson about

pests. Pests in English refers to anything like an animal and

insects even plants that are annoying. Things that bother

you. Things that maybe do things like try to eat your

garbage. Or in the case of something like a fruit fly.

They land on your fruit on your kitchen counter. Pests are not

fun. Um but there are pests all around us. So in this English

lesson I'll talk about those pests. I'll talk about what are

called and then I'll talk about some of the actions that we

take. Some of the things we do to get rid of those pests. So

welcome once again to this English lesson about pests. So

the very first thing that you want to do if you have pests.

Now again pests are things like flies and mosquitoes and weeds

in your garden is you want to get rid of them. This is the

English phrase we use when we talk about pests. If you have

fly in your house you want to get rid of them. If you have

weeds in your garden you want to get rid of them. Uh please

don't use a flamethrower like this person is doing. But this

person obviously has some kind of pests in his bedroom and he

is trying to get rid of those pests. He's using a method

that's not recommended. But it might be effective. So again

when you have pests when you have things like that insects

or animals that are bothering you you want to get rid of

them. And again for this first section I'm mostly going to be

talking about insects or what we also sometimes call bugs.

You might say oh there's a lot of bugs out today or there's a

lot of insects out today. We use bugs more often I think. Um

it's kind of the the more common term when talking about

insects but they do mean the same thing. So there are a lot

of bugs in the world. The first one we're going to talk about

is the fly. We usually refer to flies in our houses as flies or

the common house fly. Flies can be very very annoying. In fact

a fly just flew by me right now. For some reason flies love

to be where people are. Um usually because we leave food

or other things out and the flies just really enjoy eating

them or feasting on them. So flies are generally a problem.

And how do we handle that? Well sometimes we just get a fly

swatter. That's a handy thing to have. I have my fly swatter

here because there is a fly in this room right now trying to

attend this English lesson. But flies I find very very

annoying. Here's something cool about Canada though. You don't

have flies in the winter. And if you do they're very very

slow. There aren't very many flies in the winter. Basically

none. And if you do see a fly it's usually very very slow and

it's easy to swat them. We sometimes use something called

fly strips or fly paper in order to take care of a fly

problem. So if you want to get rid of flies you might hang

something like this up in your house. We don't use these in

our house. But we do have some of these in our barn. In our

barn we have some goats. And flies usually like to be around

animals as well. So we hang up fly strips in our barn. We hang

up fly paper in our barn. And usually that catches some of

the flies. And then sadly this once the fly gets stuck on the

fly paper that's that's the end for the fly. It doesn't survive

very long. Another thing we do with flies is we we shoe them

away. So this is an interesting English word. Um when there's a

fly or a mosquito buzzing around your head. Sometimes you

do this with your hands. And this is called shooing the fly

away. You might even say shoe. Shoe. You might even say the

word. When I'm sitting around a campfire sometimes there are

mosquitoes and you'll see me going like this to try and shoe

them away. Notice this spelling of shoe is different than the

thing that you wear on your foot. And then of course

there's something called fly spray. We do not use a lot of

fly spray. Um we usually try to use fly paper or use a fly

swatter to control our flies. But sometimes when you have too

many flies and it's an infestation you might spray

some fly spray. In our barn in the area where we have our

goats. Sometimes during the summer there's too many flies.

And when the goats are out on pasture eating grass we might

spray a little bit of fly spray to control the infestation. So

this would be a can of fly spray. And then of course there

are fruit flies. Fruit flies to me are amazing. If you leave

fruit out in your kitchen if you leave fruit out on the

counter after a day or two you'll have some fruit flies

and if you wait one more day without cleaning up the fruit.

You will have hundreds of fruit flies. Fruit flies reproduce

very very quickly. You can see that they are very tiny as

well. You can't really swat fruit flies like you can house

flies Um but this is definitely a problem. If you leave fruit

out on your counter eventually you will have fruit flies.

They'll come in droves we say in English. When they can smell

the the fruit. So one of the things we do in Canada to help

keep pests like flies out of our houses is we have screens

on our windows. So when I open my windows I can't stick my

hand out because there is a screen on the window that stops

flies and mosquitoes from getting in. Um so it's very

very handy to have screens on your windows. You can open your

window and enjoy the fresh air and at the same time prevent

bugs and insects from coming into your house. We call them

window screens as well. So screens or window screens.

There's also ants. Now ants can be a problem in your house.

They can also be a problem outside of your house. We

definitely have ants in Canada. If we leave food out on the

counter. Especially if someone spills something very very

sweet. Like if someone spills soda or what we call pop or

coke or a little bit of fruit juice the ants seem to really

love that. If you leave little bread crumbs or sugar out the

ants will come they will carry it away back to their nest. So

what do you do if you have ants you use ant traps and it always

makes me laugh because these don't actually trap ants. When

the ant goes in a door doesn't close and trap the ant. When

the ant goes in it gets a little bit of ant poison and it

takes it back to its home and then all of the ants end up

eating it and dying. So if you have ants you use ant traps to

try and get rid of them. I'm going to be using that phrase a

lot. You want to get rid of flies. You want to get rid of

ants. You want to get rid of them. You might also just buy

bug spray. So you might call this ant spray. But when we

talk about sprays in my part of Canada we say things like fly

spray and bug spray. And bug spray basically will kill any

kind of insects. So you might go to the hardware store and

say I really really really need some bug spray. So that's the

thing that you would use if you needed to get rid of bugs. Uh

and the formal word is insecticide. Now in Canada

there are a lot of regulations about insecticide use. You can

buy bug spray or fly spray which is a very very weak

insecticide. If you want to use something stronger there are a

lot of rules and regulations from the government. As a

farmer if I want to use a really strong insecticide I

have to take a course. And I have to get a certificate to

use it. So you can buy some things. But it's very very

Weak. If you need something stronger, you do need to get a

certificate to be able to use it. Let's talk a little bit

about mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are probably the most annoying

pests that I can think of. Whenever I'm outside I'm always

annoyed when mosquitoes land on me. You can hear mosquitoes

buzzing and maybe you try to shoo them away or you try to

swat them with your hand. Sometimes you swat something

with your hand as well. But the problem with mosquitoes is that

they bite. So you want to use something like a bug repellant.

Or mosquito repellent. So notice that these are things

that you spray on yourself. And it makes you smell funny. And

the mosquitoes don't like the smell. So whenever we go

outside at night we usually don't have very many mosquitoes

during the day. But when we go outside at night we usually put

on bug repellent. And in Canada the most common brand is

something called off. That's literally what it's called. And

we use this when we're camping or doing things outside. Did

you bring some off? Oh I need to spray some off on me. So if

you ever hear someone that that's what they're talking

about. They're talking about this product which is a bug

repellant which works really really well with mosquitoes.

That's generally what it's made for. If I work outside at night

I put some off on. Doesn't that sound funny? I put some off on

before I go outside. And then to finish up mosquitoes this is

what a mosquito bite looks like. They are itchy and you

like to scratch them for about half a day and then they're not

too bad and you get a little bump and then it turns a little

bit red. They're not harmful normally but it depends what

part of the world you live in. In Canada we do not have

malaria but we do have west nile virus. There is always a

chance you could get that. It's very very slim. But usually a

mosquito bite is not a problem. It's usually just itchy for a

day. And then it goes away. In some parts of the world people

will sleep with a mosquito net. This is not common in Canada

because we have screens on our windows. And we try to keep

houses protected from mosquitoes at all times. But

sometimes too you will still hear one while you're sleeping

buzzing and you're trying to sleep and you hear a mosquito

in your room. Uh it's not very very nice when you hear that.

Cockroaches. We do not have a lot of cockroaches in my part

of Canada. I think as you go north in the world you have

less of them. Um we do have cockroaches. Let me just do a

search for a sec. Cockroaches insects yeah they're definitely

the further south you go there are more of them I think but

yes cockroaches I don't like them when I lived in the United

States we had a house where there were some cockroaches

very very gross that would be the word I would use to

describe cockroaches let's talk about things though that aren't

insects so in Canada we definitely have mice mice come

into our house and they are annoying once again mice really

like it if you leave food out by accident if you eat a

sandwich and little breadcrumbs fall mice are like happy at

night. It's like a little feast for them. But mice are annoying

because they will make holes into things to get at the food.

So what we use generally are mouse traps. I know this

doesn't seem very nice. But you put some bait in the mouse

trap. And you set the mouse trap and then when the mouse

comes to eat the bait the trap goes off and it it kills the

mouse. There's no way to talk about this. We want to get rid

of mice and so that's how we do it. We set mouse traps. We put

bait. We don't actually use cheese though. We usually use

peanut butter. We find that mice really really like peanut

butter. So we get mouse traps. We put peanut butter in as bait

and then when the mouse comes the trap goes. I don't have a

picture of a mouse in a trap. I think that's not what people

came here to see but definitely that is how you catch them.

Some people will use mouse poison. Now some of this type

of stuff is not you can't buy as much as you used to be able

to in Canada. There are a lot of restrictions on using mouse

poison. You can still buy some mouse poison but the problem

with mouse poison is that the mouse dies somewhere in the

walls of your house and then it starts to smell. So I prefer

mouse traps. Rats. So I'd like to say a rat is just a bigger

form of a mouse but it's not. It's kind of a different animal

entirely. Rats are gross. We once had rats in our garage.

The garage of our house because we had our dog food in a spot

where the rats could find it. And they thought it was great.

There was this big bag of food for them to eat. So it took us

a little while. We ended up not having food for the dog in our

garage. And eventually we didn't have rats anymore. You

can also buy rat traps which is just a mouse trap but it's way

bigger. When I was a kid we used to build little cars and

we would use a mouse trap as the source of propulsion. There

would you would set the trap and there would be a string to

the axle of the little car and when you set off the mouse trap

the car would drive. I don't know if you ever built those.

And then we got to the point where we went and bought rat

traps and we built bigger cars. But a rat trap is something you

can to get rid of rats and then of course there's poison just

like there is for mice and there is something called a

bait station as well in Canada if you use rat poison or mouse

poison it has to be in a special container called a bait

station so that other animals won't try to eat the poison so

this is a little bait station you would put the rat or mouse

poison inside and the rat or mouse can go in the little hole

and eat it but your cat and dog can't or even children can't

Play with it, right? So it's a safe way to use poison. You

would put it in a bait station. And then lastly for those the

lesson's not over. Not lastly. But lastly about rats advice.

Um I think the best solution is get a cat. We do not have a cat

in the house. But if we really had a mouse problem I would

probably get a cat. We do like I said have cats in the barn.

Uh and they do a very very good job of controlling the mouse

and rat population. And again we try to keep the barn clean

so that we don't have a big problem. Of course if you have

a cat or a dog you might have fleas. Fleas are really really

tiny bugs that live on cats and dogs. And I think they I don't

know a lot about fleas but they somehow feed off the cat or a

dog. They're not very nice fleas at all. You want to get

rid of fleas if your dog or cat has them. One way that you can

do that is by having them wear a flea collar. You can see that

this cat is wearing a special collar. This collar I think has

some insecticide on it. It has something on it that kills

fleas and something called a tick. And so you will buy a

flea collar for your cat or dog. So that you can get rid of

the fleas. Um that's what we've done before in the past. We've

gotten flea collars. You can also get flea shampoo. A

special shampoo. The flies here. Here he is. He's he's

landing on the fly swatter. Maybe you saw him go by. I hope

so. I wanted to be part of the lesson. Um you might wash your

dog or cat. It's a little easier to give a dog a bath

than a cat in order to get rid of fleas as well. You can buy a

special shampoo that has something in it as well to get

rid of the fleas. Crickets. So a cricket is an interesting

little bug. Um it makes a loud sound like cricket cricket

cricket. That's my cricket sound. Sorry. Cricket. Cricket.

Cricket. It's not a very cricket sound. If you end up

having a cricket in your house it's very very annoying.

They're very very loud. One time I was doing a live stream

a few years ago I don't know if some of you who have been

around remember and there was a cricket in the room. And

whenever I stopped talking the cricket would go and it was

really really annoying. Um we have crickets in Canada

definitely. They are very loud when you get them in your

house. So loud that it's hard to sleep if there is a cricket

in your room. Now I mentioned ticks as well. Ticks I'll zoom

in on this. Ticks are we've had ticks in this area for a while

but there are a lot of ticks in the last five or 10 years. If

you walk through the long grass when you get back in the house

you have to check to make sure you don't have any ticks on

you. Ticks will crawl on you and they'll find a spot and

then they'll they'll kind of poke a hole into your skin and

try to drink your blood. That's what ticks like to do. Um so

it's important to find them quickly. They also carry a

disease here called Lyme disease. So if you see a tick

on someone you need to get it off really really quickly. Um

and that's why again we have flea and tick collars for our

dogs. By the way there's also a pill you can give your dog that

gets rid of fleas and ticks. I'm not sure how it works. And

there's also little drops you can put on them. I didn't

mention those but there are other alternatives. We do not

have termites in my part of Canada but I know in the

southern United States sometimes people will have a

termite infestation. Termites will move into their house and

start eating the wood. Many homes in Canada and the United

States are built from wood. We have lots of trees. It's a

readily accessible material to build things. So often we will

build our houses out of wood. Termites some termites love and

they'll move in and they'll start eating the wood in your

house. I think they eat it. They certainly destroy the wood

slowly over time. Uh we do not have termites in this area at

least to my knowledge it's not very common at all but

definitely annoying. Okay the next one might gross you out a

bit. It's lice. So lice are little little tiny bugs that

that live in your hair. As soon as I say lice I want to scratch

my head. Um lice are only a problem in this part of the

world with young children in school. Every once in a while

someone we might get a letter from school saying someone in a

class has lice make sure you start checking your kids hair

for lice and for the little eggs I guess you would call

them but lice but as soon as we get a letter like that everyone

in our house starts scratching their head because we imagine

we can feel something on our head but lice definitely

something calm in this part of the world. And then we

mentioned wasps. I don't have hornets on here. And someone

asked what the difference was between wasps and hornets. I'm

just going to check for a sec between wasps and hornets. So

it says a wasp colony tends to be smaller hornets colonies are

much larger. So but it's quite difficult to tell the

difference by appearance. Um so they are different but wasps.

So we have wasps nests. Wasp nests everywhere on our

property. Especially when I go to use a piece of farm

equipment or if I'm using something I haven't used in a

while I will check to see if wasps have built a nest on it

because I don't want to get bit or stung by wasps. When you get

a wasp sing it's very very annoying. And some people I

think people could be allergic to wasps. Definitely to bees.

But yes wasps. Wasps are not my friend. They're very very

annoying. Bed bug Bedbugs are annoying. We do not have a lot

of bed bugs in Canada. I think that bed bugs sometimes are the

result of not keeping things clean enough. But bed bugs are

little bugs that will live in your bed. And I don't know a

whole lot about them but they must be very very annoying to

to have if you have them in your part of the world. Dear we

do not have a big problem with deer. But some flower farmers

do. Some flower farmers have deer that come and eat their

flowers. Luckily we don't. There are deer around us. But

they tend to eat my soybean soybeans in my soybean field.

Instead. So deer can be a problem. Sometimes people will

plant a vegetable garden and deer will come and eat the

vegetables. They'll eat lettuce they'll eat the beans they'll

eat everything in the garden and there will be nothing for

the people to eat so definitely deer we do not have a huge

problem with grasshoppers and locusts here we do have

grasshoppers I'm not a scientist but I think

grasshoppers hop and locusts fly but some of you who are

more familiar with these animals might know but

certainly grasshoppers are around but we do not have so

many that they cause a problem. So grasshoppers in some parts

of the world though grasshoppers and locusts will

eat crops. You can see in this picture they're starting to eat

the leaves of this crop. So certainly they can be a pest.

We definitely have caterpillars though. In fact the caterpillar

that comes from something called the gypsy moth. So

there's a caterpillar and then it makes a cocoon and it comes

out as a moth or butterfly. The gypsy moth caterpillar is very

destructive sometimes in the spring. In fact this past

spring they had a helicopter that was flying around spraying

insecticide trying to kill some of the caterpillars that were

eating the trees. So definitely caterpillars can be quite

destructive. Um they'll they'll just chew they'll you can see

them they'll finish a tree off in like three days. The tree

will have hardly any leaves. It's a little bit crazy.

Raccoons can also be a pest in our part of Canada if you leave

your garbage out at night if you put your garbage at the

road the night before there's a good chance a raccoon is going

to come and they're going to get into your garbage raccoons

are really good at figuring out how to open garbage cans even

if they have a sturdy lid sometimes raccoons will still

get them open let me just check something here for a sec I

think I spelled raccoon wrong. Definitely I spelled raccoon

wrong. So if you're seeing raccoon with one C it actually

has two Cs. So when you look at that slide there's a mistake. I

made a mistake last week too. I spelled two with one O instead

of two. So maybe I'm not the best person to learn English

from. Anyways raccoons can certainly be a problem. And

birds. We have raspberry bushes. Raspberries are little

red or purple berries. They're very very yummy but if we don't

get them in time the birds eat them. The birds come and they

eat the raspberries. So birds can certainly be pests as well.

When we plant seeds sometimes we spread seeds on the ground

and the birds will come and they'll eat the seeds if

they're close to the surface. So what some people do is they

will put a scarecrow in their field. So a scarecrow is

basically you get some wood and you put some clothes on it so

it looks like a person and then usually the wind makes it move

a little bit and the scarecrow scares some of the birds away.

And by the way I think it has the name scarecrow because

they're trying to scare away crows. Like there's a bird

called a crow. I don't have a picture of it. We once had a

problem with squirrels in our attic. This is a raccoon by the

way. Once again raccoon is spelt with two seas not one. Uh

this is a raccoon and it's in a trap. We had squirrels living

in the attic of our house. So we had to trap them and then

we'd let them go at the other end of the farm and then we

covered all the holes that they were using to get in. So a trap

is a very humane way to catch an animal so that you can let

it go somewhere else. And then of course if you have a problem

you can call pest control. There are people who will come

and they will trap pests or they will spray for pests. They

will do whatever needs to be done to get rid of the pests

for you. They might get rid of animals. They might get rid of

bugs or insects. But you might need to call pest control if

you have a pest problem and you can't take care of it yourself.

And we sometimes call these people exterminators. Although

this word is not as common anymore. I think pests Control

sounds nicer than exterminator. So you would say I'm going to

call pest control. Um the person still called an

exterminator though. I would still call the person who

drives this truck. Uh you might call them a pest control worker

but I would still call them an exterminator. And we talked a

little bit about cleanliness. One of the best ways to prevent

having pests to prevent getting pests is to make sure your home

and your area the area you live is very clean. One of the

reasons pests come is because they want to eat your cat food

or your dog food or the little bread crumbs that you left on

the kitchen counter or maybe your child spilled some juice

on the on the floor of the kitchen. So just keeping your

home clean can be very very helpful because pests are

almost always looking for food. They're looking for something

to eat and your kitchen is usually the best place to find

it. They love the garbage can as well. And then I didn't talk

About this too much but there is one other kind of pests

sorry there. Uh and those are weeds. We would call these

pests as well. Um normally when we talk about pests we're

talking about insects and animals. But weeds fall into

this category as well. Sometimes plants grow where you

don't want them to grow. And that can be very very

frustrating as well. You can go and buy a hand weeder and you

can weed them if you want to. And then as well there is

something called weed spray or herbicide. So insecticide kills

insects. Herbicides kill plants. I don't have a slide

for that but you can buy herbicides. By the way in

Canada herbicides are very tightly controlled. It's not

very easy to buy herbicides. Again if you're a farmer and

you need to spray your field you need a special certificate

and training in order to use it.