Bugs. Pests. Rodents. We like to think we don’t share our home with them. We use chemicals, traps, and anything else we can think of in order to avoid them. And yet, they keep coming back. What can be done?
Enter the electronic pest repellent
Chemical pest control is still the most effective, but a lot of people worry about what it’s doing to the environment. It has to be applied by professionals if you want the good stuff, and people worry about the impact on their pets. They should, because the same poisons that kill mice can make other small mammals mighty sick.
The new alternative is an electronic pest repellent. These devices put out sounds too high for humans to hear, too high for all animals but the smallest, and those noises are so loud and annoying that bugs and rodents just don’t want to come near the house.
I wondered whether this sort of thing would work, but I wasn’t willing to import a couple hundred thousand bugs to find out. I prefer my workspace bug-free, and wasn’t willing to risk that. So, desperate for an angle for this article, I decided to see if it would be a problem for pets.
A little help from my friend
You might remember blog mascot Charlotte, who has been helping me test Solid Signal products since 2012. Here she is acting as an attenuator for one of our HD-Blade antennas. (By the way, the antenna still performed great with a cat on it.)
I decided to see if she would be ok with the electronic pest repeller
Tech Choice’s electronic pest repeller
For my test I chose the Tech Choice Electronic Pest Repeller, which is a Solid Signal Exclusive. It’s supposed to be better than other devices on the market because it rotates between different frequencies. You plug it in, and it chooses one of 16 different sounds that are all supposed to drive pests mad. Yet they are supposed to be pet-safe.
It seemed like quite a claim since all small animals have great hearing up in the high ranges where humans can’t hear anything. I decided to give it a try.
Day 1: I couldn’t hear anything
The good news here, I couldn’t tell if the pest repeller was putting out any noise. I have to say I was a little worried that I would be able to hear the sound it put out. Yeah, I’m an old dude but my hearing’s still pretty good. I was worried that the sounds which were so annoying to the bugs would also be annoying to me. Good news: they weren’t. They truly are ultrasonic.
Day 7: Apathy
I was a little worried when I saw that the cat was avoiding the area where the pest repeller was. She didn’t seem to be worked up, but she really wouldn’t come near it. Then again, she’s a cat so who knows why she does anything.
It took several days but it became quite obvious that Charlotte didn’t care one bit about the pest repeller. I couldn’t tell you whether it was working because I didn’t have pest to begin with. What I was able to tell you though was that clearly it wasn’t having an effect on the cat’s rigorous nap schedule.
Check out the ultrasonic pest repeller from Solid Signal today!
