Chamberlain was immediately distracted during warm-ups, twitching and shaking his head, trying in vain to scare off the pests.
She typed his manuscripts, set up the houses, fended off the pests, and, according to Sybille Bedford's 1973 biography, vetted his mistresses, generously employing her own charms to help him pull in the best-qualified candidates.
A canvas by the Cuban Surrealist painter Wifredo Lam had arrived in the studio infested with hundreds of tobacco beetles; it was propped up against a wall, vacuum-sealed in a pouch filled with argon gas, which, it was hoped, was killing off the pests.
The bedbug equivalent is the person who believes that vacuuming an apartment or washing the floors will kill off the pests.
If a plant is infested, spray it with a mineral-oil based insecticide to kill off the pests.
The flowers of the chive plant entice beneficial insects to your garden, which in turn kill off the pests and unwanted bugs that might be around.
The Chinese government has dispatched just the 33,000 exterminator personnel to Inner Mongolia to try to head off the hungry pests, so we must cross our fingers.
Within a few years the wasps, which die off once the pests disappear, had destroyed the psyllid population, and farmers were able to forgo use of expensive pesticides.
Such a house has solid walls, too, which help to shut off that pest of to-day - the neighbour with a wireless or gramophone.
