Less ugly pest control.

• Author: Pennybacker, Mindy
• Position: GREEN GUIDANCE

When bad weather keeps you indoors, you probably would rather not share your space with pests or conventional remedies. The former can spread disease while pesticides can cause allergic reactions, irritate skin, eyes, and lungs, or poison children and pets. What's the alternative? Hold up a mirror to a roach, and his reflection will cause him to flee the premises, one nineteenth-century author advises. Unfortunately, more than a century later, we still have roaches in places we'd rather not. Many people, in exasperation, resort to highly poisonous "killer" sprays.

Happily, there exists a simple, less dramatic and more effective system of pest control, called Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, which employs least-toxic strategies. "IPM has three parts: sanitation, exclusion, and baits," says Bill Quarles of the Biointegrated Resource Center (BIRC) in Berkeley, California. Here are some tips from BIRC and the book Tiny Game Hunting to help you manage (i.e., destroy) the uninvited:

* They come looking for food and water. Never leave food...