Pest Mice and Plague (Part II)

The Black Death (part II): A Historical Account Of the Pest's Virulence

Disappearance of the Black Death

It wasn't until the later part of 1530's that the plague began to dissipate in Europe. The last strike of the plague in England was around 1665 and in Western Europe, the last traces were sometime 1722, about almost a century later. The gradual disappearance of The Black Death has spawned many theories and hypothesis as to what caused the exodus. One of the most argued and heated theories was that the black rats whom have been believed to be the primary carrier of the plague has been naturally replaced by brown rats that doesn't carry the plague infection. Whether due to migration of species or just the natural balance of things they can't figure out what exactly it was that lead to the replacement. Another theory suggests that the long term exposure among rodents to the disease made them develop an immunity system against the disease, thus, making them unviable for the disease's communication or probably the disease itself has undergone evolutionary changes that it became less fatal and eventually broke the centuries of contagion cycle. Amongst the theories that were formulated to explain the departure of the plague that garnered most approval from scientists at present was the concept of human intervention. Even though it wasn't until the early 19th century that doctors have found out how the bacteria and viruses in germs could lead to the disease, the fact along that Europeans were able to discover already in the 16th century that the plague's contagiousness and its parasitic characteristics, moving from one place to another probably dawned the beginning of the end of the plague.


Up to present times, scientists are still studying some areas around Europe were there was an account of historical concentration of the plague to uncover clues and certain evidences that would support any of the theories and finally find the ultimate answer as to what caused the plague at the first place and how it ended. However, conclusions are still remotely perceivable and angles of possible causes are still in consideration. Another debacle of the scientists that are onto finding the truth about the Black Death is the fact that the disease has indeed evolved to different forms over the years, making its origins remotely traceable. It is now hard to identify the characteristics of the disease's former state during the plague.

Effects of the Plague

Numerous consequences followed after the passing of The Black Death and all the other epidemics of the bubonic plague. One of the most horrendous accounts of the aftermaths of the plague was the series of horrifying vicious attacks on the Jews, outsiders and lepers whom were accused of deliberately imbuing poison into the air and water that caused the pestilence. The assaults have originated from the south of France, but were increasingly dramatic in the parts of Germany and Switzerland –the areas that have rich historical accounts of Jewish discrimination and attacks on their community. There were massacres even in Bern as a natural scenario that followed after. For weeks of formidable tension, Jews were wounded up together and burned or drowned in the marshes. There were also accounts of attacks on Jews even if there were no plagues. Slaughtering them was an accepted scenario as most of the other communities hated the Jews, in their conviction that they were the ones that caused the plague. The Pope, the highest leader of the Catholic Church deplored and condemned these killings that took place all around the Europe and had put forth efforts in discouraging the people from doing the heinous deeds. However, the face of mass's fury, these efforts were proven futile and the Jew killings continued on until the plague's manifestations have totally lifted up. That was the only time when the persecutions ended. There were accounts of persecution that took place after the plague, but confrontations were not with violence as it was during 1348 and 1351.

Contemporary Writers and Chroniclers have often labeled the plague as "a horrible and cruel thing".  Town during the time after the plague seemed to have been desolated and deserted.  The overall population of Europe was reduced drastically up to 50 percent or even more. In places like Bremen and Germany, casualties have reached to 7,000 to 12,000 inhabitants. Florence suffered even more casualties of the plague; deaths ranging from 40,000 to 90,000 of its inhabitants were wiped out during after the plague. Near Siena, two-thirds of the population in the urban areas were annihilated. 50,000 to 180,000 were recorded dead due to the plague in Paris, the largest city in the Northern Alps. Major cities in Europe were compelled to dig mass graves to dispose and burry the multitude of cadavers after the plague. There were even cases that an entire village's population, particular the smaller scale places, was annihilated due to the plague. And some time, villages have disappeared altogether. Larger towns were economically maimed due to drastic reduction of manpower, having their workforce and merchants either fled or died from the plague. The recovery of the population would have been easily done, however the newer epidemics that came after that plague prevented the reinstatement. European high populations were not reinstated only until last decades of the 1400's.

Economic changes can be evidently recognized after the plague as wealth became more concentrated on certain strata of the society. The deaths of thousands of people have lead to the unequal distribution of resources, leaving the survivors as benefactors of the resources left by the departed. Moreover, workers that have survived the plague were paid 5 times more for handling more than one person's job, having all other workers die from the plague, landlords and business owners are compelled to compensate more. The corresponding rise in per capita was inevitable and natural considering the deaths of many people. The drop in population has resulted to the natural economic affluence of the place. Extravagant spending in the different towns that followed were well documented. Merchants and landlords however, are getting poor by having to compensate more than regular and getting less return of investment.

The plague brought a few changes to religion and to medicine. Devotees continued to visit shrines as they normally do before and during the plague, still praying for the saints like St. Roch to protect them from any other plagues that might come. Pilgrimages to shrines were even made more popular. Other saints like St. Roch were even depicted in portraits of them protecting individuals from pestilence of anything depictive and symbolical of that sort. Although, many Europeans complained of the little help contributed by the contemporary physicians, old practices of alternative medicine and traditional medical practices were still being patronized. It remained unchanged even until the time when cholera struck up to 1830s.

Editor's Remarks

This article is largely educational in nature. In the light of knowing more about the pests and their effects of inhabiting the household, it would be wise to grasp some outsource knowledge regarding their nature, in the hope that having been able to know more about them would enable you to defend yourself from them and the harms they provide. Pest mice control is a mean towards an end. But such mean would require you to have sufficient knowledge first in what you are dealing with. I hope you will find this article both educational and motivating.

All the best,

Sergiu Zburatoru

How to Get Rid of Mice FOR BEGINNERS

Pest Mice and Plague (Part I)

The Black Death (part I): A Historical Account Of the Pest's Virulence

The Black Death is basically the term given to the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Europe and in Mediterranean in the early 14th century, somewhere around 1347 through 1351. Actually it was the first of the many cycles of epidemic plagues that struck entire Europe until the 17th century and sparingly followed in the next centuries afterward. The occurrence of the last known plague was sometime around 1722 in Marseilles. It was also considered as the last known major outbreak. All the plagues that followed after that were minor plagues that quickly disappeared in a relatively short span of time. In fact these plagues' predecessors started way back during the ancient plagues that took place sometime the 6th and 8th century A.D. Following that, were more modern versions of the epidemic plagues and were also less deadly. They have began starting from the 19th century and somehow followed through until the early 20th century. The chronic epidemic that struck Europe wasn't called "The Black Death" at first until much later. Contemporaries often call the centuries' long epidemic phenomenon as "The Great Mortality" or "The Pestilence".

The Plague were series of bacterial infection which could take more than just one state or form in the host. High fever and certain amounts of swellings in the armpit or in the groin are just some of the symptoms commonly manifested from a victim of the bubonic plague. Back then, modern antibiotics that can deal with the infections were still not invented and 60 percent of the infected populace will inevitably die within the first 5 days of the infection. Pneumonic and Septicemic plagues were also amongst the other forms of the plague and are proven to be quite as deadly as well. It was though that the disease was carried through critter hosts such as rodents, prairie dogs, and marmots etc. The disease is then transmuted to human hosts through fleas that just fed on infected rodent blood that would then attach themselves to human host. Other means of disease communication is through rodent feces and urine which should be naturally infected as well.

The Origins

Until now, scientists and historians are still uncertain of the exact origins of The Black Death. Medieval chroniclers and early European historians theorized that the disease originated in China because the land's association with magical orientations. According to Chroniclers, the plague came with earthquakes, vermin plagues, and fire falling from the sky. However, this was associated with folklore and myths and the hypothetical interpretations with life outside of Europe. According to more recent researches, the disease has most likely migrated from the Middle-East to southern Russia and the areas somewhere in between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The plague then spread out through west along the trade routes. Epidemics were already then proliferating among the Tartars in the Southern parts of Russia around 1346. Merchants have then probably carried the disease along the access trade routes and thus the plague has reached the Italians residing in the towns near the Black Sea. In the same manner, merchants originating from that place have relocated the disease to Alexandria, Egypt sometime 1347; moving to Libya and Damascus in 1348 and then Upper Egypt in the following year. Genoese and Venetian sailors are believed to have extended the plague to Europe.

From then the plague quickly accessed places in Europe via trade routes. Beginning its arrival on 1348 in Pisa, the disease traveled across to Florence then Rome and Bologna; then starting from Venice, it then again moved to Germany and Austria, then to Genoa and eventually to Spain. By June of 1348 it has reached France and finally the contagion has reached England in beginning of summer 1349.

Causes of the Plague

The contemporary doctors and theologians have all agreed that the plague were both religious and medical in nature. One of their beliefs was the disease was brought down as the wrath of God in order to punish the sinfulness of humans. Another belief was it was caused by the lack of balance in the body fluids. The accounts of earthquakes, floods and tongues of fire falling from the sky preceding the plague, were indications that the illness was a call to repentance according to early Christians. As a reply to that calling, some of those Christians have formed groups they would later come to name as Flagellants and they then began to ritually lash and beat themselves as penance for their sins and as well for others. Their existence sometime around the 10th century did not mitigate the outbreak of the plague. Instead the contagion exponentially increased throughout Europe.

Contemporary medieval physicians derived their medical ideas from the early Greeks and Romans whom have believed that the cause of the plague were the disruption of the body system's balance, particularly the fluids within the body. Imbalances can be caused by sudden emotional outbursts or inequitable distribution of diet and other external factors that could potentially invade and disrupt the natural balance in the body. Writers on the other hand theorized that the plague was celestially associated. As stars and planets have beset influence to the earth thus causing earthquakes which would then result to the emission of noxious gasses out from the earth's surface. They believed that these gases primarily caused the disease to spawn.  Physicians then immediately promulgated protocols to avoid anything that would potentially disrupt the body's delicate natural balance. The government as well regulated the trade and production of dangerous odors or any matter that is potentially corrupted.

Preventive Measures

There occurrences of epidemics somewhere around the late 14th and 15th centuries, however, they were less virulent as its predecessors. The contemporaries have begun to see through the patterns of the plague and sense what they could possible do to counteract and mitigate the gravity of the plague. They discovered after some time observing, that the disease is most likely to spawn in the summer or early fall. Furthermore, they have also noticed that the plague is highly concentrated in the most urban poorest areas. Mostly in areas where there is a highly congested population with tightly closed neighborhood is where the plague's concentration's at peak. An Italian, Girolamo Fracastoro, explained that it was the poor who were spreading out the disease. His assumptions have lead to the avoidance of people from any poor or sick person encounter as it was the only best defense against contagion. Those who were capable of relocating transferred themselves to distant areas far from the poor neighborhood or villages, thus, far from the contagion.

There were also quarantines implemented as a counteractive measure against the plague, however, with the multitude of the infected people and the widespread contagion it was almost impossible to quarantine and contain the affected population.

At the onset of the late 17th century, governments have begun implement medical boundaries or cordon sanitaire between Europe and the eastern parts where the disease has been said to have come from. Ships coming from those areas were forced to cease to implement specialized quarantine procedures before anyone or anything is unloaded from the ship. Quarantines were so strictly implemented that anyone who would try to avoid by running away from implementing personnel were shot.

Here's Pest Mice and Plague (Part II).

All the best,

Sergiu Zburatoru

How to Get Rid of Mice FOR BEGINNERS

A Pest Mice Story

This is a guest post written by one of my good friends Carl from Ohio.

Mice are indeed very troublesome creatures. And the reason why we most often than not call them pests is that they do more damage than good to humans. Even your pet mice or anything of that sort once undomesticated will revert back to its former nature and will gnaw on almost anything is sees. House mice are amongst the top in the league of domestic pests that causes a lot of damages to human properties. And we do try to get rid of them in any way we know possible. However, there are just these times that they prove to be really difficult of a catch that we would have to resort into extreme measures, such as poisoning them. It should be understood that poisoning pest mice should be a last option to anyone as there can be potential harms to us humans if we use poison to catch vermin as we can be victims as well of its deadly affects.

I myself have bear witness to the different ways of dealing pest mice in the house as we do have a lot of mice inhabiting and roaming around the house. Often I could not find myself to sleep because of the noise the foraging mice create on the wall and on the ceilings. I have personally deduced already that there are quite a number of mice infesting my household basing on the amount of noise I do hear each night at bed. Even when I'm watching TV at my couch in the living room, I hear them squeaking as if talking to each other, communicating their locations and signaling the others where the food resources are located. And each morning as I wake up, I often see a lot of pest devastation taking place in anywhere in the house. Gnawing damages in the fridge cables, the wiring behind my TV stand are all torn up, there was even one time that my DVD component ceased to function already because it suffered too much gnawing damage and I then have to buy a new one for replacement. There were times as well when I leave food on the table especially when I can't finish up my dinner I often leave them on the table to finish them up the next morning and I wake up to my surprise finding all the left food were already gone or sometimes, at least most of it are gone. It was then I realized that the vermin problem has been causing too much property damage already and the monetary investments lost on the properties that were damaged are skyrocketing into proportions I never would have expected. And then I thought it is about time I take a counter-measure against this pest mice control issue before things would really go out of control. Of course I don't want end up becoming homeless because my house suddenly dilapidated due to the amount of damage the pests have already inflicted.

So I did take countermeasures and invested on the purchase of many different varieties of pest mice control methods and devices. It was a trial and error stage for me at first because I can’t seem to find the right device or method that would truly answer the pest mice problem inside the house. There were times I thought to myself that I probably have missed on something on the steps on how to effectively catch them. Even though I know that everything would have been probably a lot easier if I go to a professional pest exterminator and hire their services but the vision of the amount of expenses it would cost me to hire them often scares me to hell. I know for a fact that exterminators could charge as much $300 for full package pest extermination and with the quantity of pest problem I have inside my house I could already foresee the scary dollar figure it would entail. So I chose not to hire them and decided to deal with the vermin problem myself. I did my own homework (I know, you should be thinking now that I should have done this a long time before.) and researched on all popular pest mice control methods in the internet.

On my first search, things weren't as easy as it seems. I mean, I thought there was one universally accepted device or method to deal with pest mice for good, however, when I typed-in the keyword "pest mice control" a lot of things were popping already in a “0.008 seconds” span of time. Different websites offering different opinions on varying methods and devices and each of them is saying their ways would totally cure anyone's domestic vermin problem. Having a lot of options made quite oblivious which to pick and uncertain about their effectiveness as they all claim to be effective. I could imagine that some websites would go through great lengths in lying just to prove that they offer the most effective tips in dealing with pest and or have someone buy their items. It's not that I could not purchase a device for me, but I can't be too slipshod in the purchase decision. I can't be wasting any more money after all the repairs and renovations I had and I would have to come-by with what the pests have already caused. So I have to be really careful on pinpointing my next investment otherwise, I might just end up donating instead of investing. Everyone has to or at least wants to have an ROI in all of their investments and so did I.

Like I said at first it was awfully difficult for me to take a pick. I couldn't come up with a system yet to narrow down my choices, let alone narrow down the websites to the few credible ones I should refer to. So it was kind of deadlock situation for me at first but it wasn't too long until I finally came up with a way on how to filter the options laid right in front of me. I thought, that all of them could possibly be telling the truth or at least of what they say is truth, considering that there are indeed ways that are more popular than the others and most of the websites I came across would probably have tackled these ways in full or in passing in their contents. So I did a full review on all of the websites that popped on that keyword and read-on each and every one of them and searched for the most commonly mentioned means. And eventually after my extensive assessment was through I end up with three things that were the most common of them all - Traps, Rodenticides, and Pets.

After narrowing down my options, I then checked on the reviews and comments of each website on their products and whichever says more positive stuff is where I would make a purchase. But acquiring the items is not the end of the story, most of all dealing with the mice problem for good. It took me some months to finally effective situate the traps and rodenticides and picking the right pets that would really scare the mice away. But after months of wait I finally was able to get rid of the mice problem. Now I could sleep right away without being bothered by the screeches and scratches on the walls or be worried about the gnawing damages in the morning. Finally, I now have a pest mice free house.

All the best,

Sergiu Zburatoru

How to Get Rid of Mice FOR BEGINNERS

How to Get Rid of Pest Mice

Our main priority on this blog is telling people various methods and techniques on how to get rid of mice. Even though we live in the 21st century there are still a lot of cases of mice infestation and we do believe that if you are a proud homeowner and live somewhere outside of the big city you have probably already experienced some unpleasant issues related to pest mice. These rodents can easily come to your house, basement, walls or attic from anywhere around, especially if you keep some kind of cereals and crop there. Usually, mice don’t have absolutely any interests in living in or near your house if you don’t have any food them – they are going to starve. However, we all known that the main priority of pest mice is to locate food, eat food and breed.

There are several bullet proof ways that can help you to get rid of pest mice. We have talked about them in our old articles, but today we are going to review those that we consider to be more important. However, even though there are extremely many rodents, especially mice in cities like London and New York, in most of the cases people have problems with these creators when activating and living in the country side, mostly near a grain field. During winter, mice will always look for a warmer place to stay and something better to eat. They all strive to survive till the harsh weather gets away and they can easily continue their existence. Well, while this might sound a little bit cruel (not to let a mouse to warm his legs in your house) there are quite a few cases when owners of properties and houses have to suffer a lot because of their infestation.

Knowing how to get rid of pest mice implies several old school methods that people know but are afraid to apply either because they consider that things changed and it might happen that mice got adapted and won’t react like they used to and secondly because they feel that there should be some more efficient ways of getting rid of rodents without directly killing mice. In other words, instead of taking action and doing something about their pest problem, people seek opportunities to avoid directly dealing with these creatures and this is when they have to pay – big bucks, to the mice exterminators. So this is the most popular and widely spread choice when it comes to dealing with your rodents infestation problems. When trying to solve their mice extermination thing, people buy yellow pages and call their local pest extermination company. In our opinion this is a method either for extremely lazy people or for those that run a business and cannot afford to spend their time preparing mice repellent on their own or searching for information on how to get rid of mice on the internet.

However, before appealing to a mouse extermination company that could help you get rid of pest mice you should try something on your own. By doing this you dramatically increase the chances of them having success and of blocking any future attempts of rodents to get in your house, attic, roof, basement, walls, or kitchen. What you need to do is a general cleaning of your house (including all the above mentioned places) and removing all the potential food sources. You need to make sure that there is not firm reason for pest mice to visit your place and seek food to eat and a place to stay. If they can’t find these resources there is high possibility that they are going to leave and never come back. So why wasting your wealth on services that can provide you with awesome results when you can try these little tricks on your own?

Knowing how to control pest mice is not an art. It is something that each and every homeowner should know how to do. If you have the possibility, you can contact your local pest extermination company each time you have a need, but should you? The best way to get rid of mice is understanding how to get rid of pest mice without wasting too much resources and calling expensive exterminators to do the work.

All the best,

Sergiu Zburatoru

How to Get Rid of Mice FOR BEGINNERS