Archive Gallery: PopSci Goes A-Ratting (And More Pest Control)
Traps, lamps, poison and fire. About a month ago, my apartment had some unwelcome visitors in the form of cream-colored little worms writhing about on my kitchen and bathroom floor. Maggots. It was deeply unsettling, but, as always, science was on my side, with its pressurized cans of grocery store poison, specifically calibrated for my particular pest problem. Sure, we were sweeping up scores of dead fly bodies for weeks, but at least they were dead. This week's archive gallery takes a look at all the different ways we humans like to destroy the creatures that bother us. Sometimes we poison them, sometimes we let an aesthetically-pleasing electrical lamp zap them from a comfortable distance away. Sometimes we build clever traps and sometimes we BURN THEM WITH FIRE. Click here to explore the gallery. Enter the gallery above to take a journey with us down the lane of pest control's past. We'll take a...