An Avian Colony

Good ol' 7 dust (Sevin dust) ; when I was a kid, we used it for everything, along with methyl-bromide, DDT, and arsenic of lead; oh, and not to forget plenty of carbolic acid salve.

We had plenty of good home-grown vegetables as a result, instead of the knotty worm-eaten stuff I see come out of gardens these days.

We lived in a constant fog of Sevin dust; sling some in the dog-house; sling some in the chicken-house; sling some on the cows faces and across their backs, as well as the horses and mules; sling some in the barn-stalls; one of us hold the dogs while the other worked it into their hide.

You have not lived until you have held a chicken up by the hind legs in 100-degree heat while someone else dumps hand-fulls of Sevin all over them, and forty or fifty chickens was a small flock.

Depending on the plant being protected, we took a sixteen-penny nail and poked a hundred holes in a brown paper sack, filled it about half-full of Sevin, twisted the top closed, and walked along the rows, shaking the dust onto the leaves; other plants required the dust be dumped into the bottom-end of an old sock as the applicator; sometimes, it was applied via a hand-pumped "duster"; other times, it was mixed in water and applied either with a three-gallon spray or a hand-pumped "fogger"


If you had any sense at all, you learned at an early age to never let anyone see you scratch an itch, not even another kid, as it always done one kid a bushel of good to quickly advertise to the adults any possible maladies suffered by another.

Although it was not insectly possible for a louse or chicken-mite to have survived the constant barrage of 7-dust, if someone saw you scratch your head, or anywhere else for that matter, male or female it mattered not, you got your head shaved and a couple hand-fulls of 7-dust worked into your scalp, ears, and any other orifices.

Get on the school bus or walk into Sunday school with your head shaved and nobody would sit close.


Thanks for mentioning Sevin dust and reminding me of my childhood.