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Mandroid2.0 wrote:Is it just me, or have Wisconsin/UP mosquitos become more silent within the last 15-20 years?

WHUH? HUH? WHAT'S THAT?!?!

;P

Sock OR Muffin? wrote:

kerble wrote:the mosquitos in India are the reason I can not donate blood or plasma. Since I go there so often (every 1.5 or so years) I'm a high risk candidate for triggering a malaria outbreak.

NOT CRAP!

See also: Travel to Belize.

Still crap though.

When I was in Belieze, I didn't have any mosquito trouble, maybe because it was like February or something, not the bad part of mosquito season. The sand fly bites on the other hand were brutal. much smaller than mosquitos, like fruitfly sized. and the bites are like 10 times worse than a mosquito. man that sucked.

mosquitos, I almost feel like they don't exist anymore. I never really see em in the city. I'm sure if I went to a more naturely area I'd find them just fine. but I never see them in the city. something to add to the list of what I love about Chicago.

there was a mosquito in my car this morning, scott!

Do mosquitoes serve a purpose, like bees do? Pollinating flowers, something like that?

I can't hate them completely if they do.

As it is, I dislike them. One or two bites from them cause my entire body to itch - they trigger bizarre histimine reactions in me.

At least once a summer, when they are spraying for West Nile around here, I get stuck in the path of the malathion truck.

I try to avoid bananas in summer, to keep myself less attractive to them.

Whiny little fuckers.

Red Square wrote:hate the little bastards...out in the more backwoods areas of this dismal little burg of the golden triangle they can get seriously huge...

like a goddamn flying grape...

hahahahaha

burun wrote:Do mosquitoes serve a purpose, like bees do? Pollinating flowers, something like that?

I can't hate them completely if they do.

i was wondering this myself.

judging by a quick peek at the wikipedia, the answer is:

hate them completely.

not only are they nothing but a nuisance here, they are a massive killer and carrier of disease worldwide.

the only good thing about mosquitoes is that they are one living thing you can feel absolutely no remorse about killing on sight.

my dad was born in Trinidad...Mosquitoes don't bite him.

my friend was born in Africa...Mosquitoes don't bite him either.

me, I was born in Wisconsin and Mosquitoes think I'm delicious.

CRAP

scott wrote:

Sock OR Muffin? wrote:

kerble wrote:the mosquitos in India are the reason I can not donate blood or plasma. Since I go there so often (every 1.5 or so years) I'm a high risk candidate for triggering a malaria outbreak.

NOT CRAP!

See also: Travel to Belize.

Still crap though.

When I was in Belieze, I didn't have any mosquito trouble, maybe because it was like February or something, not the bad part of mosquito season. The sand fly bites on the other hand were brutal. much smaller than mosquitos, like fruitfly sized. and the bites are like 10 times worse than a mosquito. man that sucked.

I really didn't get bitten in Belize either but I think the Red Cross just has to take the precaution. I got ravaged by sand fleas when I went to Barbados last year. Got bit so bad on my left foot that it swelled up like a rotten sausage and red lines were travelling up my leg. Scary. Itchy. Sand fleas are little minions of Satan.

Verbs and Nouns wrote:That annoying buzzing sound you can hear when you're trying to go to sleep...

This is the absolute worst. I've lost a good half-hour or so of sleep in one night attempting to track one down and end its life.

Last night I thought I felt one crawling on my leg which led to my entire body itching. I thought my room was swarmed with them. Apparently it was just a thread or something.

CRAP WF:1 because as a little kid my arms and legs were so skinny my friends nicknamed me "mosquito," or "skeeter." Cute.

burun wrote:At least once a summer, when they are spraying for West Nile around here, I get stuck in the path of the malathion truck.

I remember, when I was a little kid back in the middle to late 1960's, running through the clouds of mosquito pesticide when the spray truck would go through my neighborhood. Back then, the clouds of pesticide the trucks produced were much larger and more opaque then they are now.

Myself, and kids throughout the neighborhood, would follow the truck around and run in and out of the cloud of mist the truck produced.

Once in a while I've wondered if that exposure to pesticide ever caused me any kind of problems.

Mark Hansen wrote:

burun wrote:At least once a summer, when they are spraying for West Nile around here, I get stuck in the path of the malathion truck.

I remember, when I was a little kid back in the middle to late 1960's, running through the clouds of mosquito pesticide when the spray truck would go through my neighborhood. Back then, the clouds of pesticide the trucks produced were much larger and more opaque then they are now.

Myself, and kids throughout the neighborhood, would follow the truck around and run in and out of the cloud of mist the truck produced.

Once in a while I've wondered if that exposure to pesticide ever caused me any kind of problems.

I worked 4 years of mosquito abatement in the western suburbs in the '80's. I had to be licensed by the state to mix and handle malathion. It was stupid easy to get a license, but still. I handled it a lot and I ain't dead. Breathing in chemical vapor (especially as a child) is never a good idea though, and we had to shut down or leave our route if we got followed by the neighborhood kids.

Adult mosquitos are the hardest to kill, so that night spraying crap is only marginally effective. It serves as much as a placebo effect. We had a lab crew that maintained about 30 traps all over our region. Every day they'd swap them out, sort the insects by gender and species, and count them. That and weather determined whether we'd go out at night. Most of our work was during the day spraying for larva. That stage of the insect is easiest to kill. We mostly used a type of biodegradable oil that formed a thin layer on the surface of the water. Mosquito larva breath air through their ass (not really, but close...). They can't breath through the oil so they die. Other thing we used was BT. That was more for some big propeller driven spray rigs we had on 1 ton trucks that we used in the Forest Preserves. We also had several aquariums where we bred a type of fish that lives exclusively on mosquito larva. Those went to golf courses and cemetaries and places that had ornamental ponds.

Old tires. Fuckin' mosquito LOVES to breed in old tires. Bad mosquitos too...the kind that transmit encephalitis. I spent a lot of time spraying big collections of old tires.

yer mosquito is a great food source for a number of critturs. Annoying it may be, but it fills it's hole in the ecosystem