vermin

How to Pest-Proof Your House, 1639

To repel flies, spiders, scorpions, and other animals…

With respect to caterpillars, snails, and slugs, they can only be gathered by hand…

How to make a Receit, that neither Rat nor Mouse shall eat or gnaw of your Cheese…

Remember likewise, that they are a very subtle vermin, for if they in the least suspect what you are about, you cannot catch them…

Take an Earthen Platter, that is broad and shallow, fill it half full with Goats Blood…

The smell of a goat is obnoxious to the nostrils of rats…

Procure the hollow claws of Lobsters, Crabs, &c. and hanging them in different parts of the garden…

Spread Gun-powder, beaten small, about the crevices of your bedstead…

If you have a room or floor in your dwelling infested with flies, take little sprigs of fern…