Mosquito alarm clocks....

Are not very reliable on when they go off.

Itch a LOT.

Really annoying.

Mosquito Darwin Award=sit on patterned wall nearby and are very visible after performing their wakeup duty

Worse is the singing wakeup when they decide to float into your ear and tune up.

I'm up, that welt on my elbow is huge and my spouse has been warned not to step on my shadow for awhile. I swatted and washed off the wall.

Ever since I had the round of type II diabetes I really take a dim view of roving organic freelance sample takers. I like my blood to stay where it is, thank you anyways.

Doctor took my caffeine away, can you tell?

Cant help the doctors orders - but I can mention that I make soapnut soap/tea and use that for laundry, and as of skeeter season Ive been generous with lemon eucalyptus and pine essentials - the passive remainder on my clothes and bedding seem to keep all but the hungriest at bay.

Im O- blood and I think they like the taste, as I get 10x bites of my compadres in most situations. I feel your maddening pain. BE STRONG AND SANE.

I don't know why, but the vampire bugs have been leaving me alone this year (knock wood). Usually I'm their favourite snack.

Ian Rule wrote:Cant help the doctors orders - but I can mention that I make soapnut soap/tea and use that for laundry, and as of skeeter season Ive been generous with lemon eucalyptus and pine essentials - the passive remainder on my clothes and bedding seem to keep all but the hungriest at bay.

Im O- blood and I think they like the taste, as I get 10x bites of my compadres in most situations. I feel your maddening pain. BE STRONG AND SANE.

I'm A pos, and if there is one in the building she will have me for lunch. Not much seems to deter them sadly, other than active dumping water, using skeeter dunk crumbles, and liberal amounts very highly concentrated DEET (which I hate and avoid using)

Years and years ago, we went to the state fair. Mid afternoon, July, hot. My parents insisted on walking all the stock barns to look at the livestock. (every time we went that was the first item of business. We had critters at home, we never brought any to the fair, and why we had to do this I never figured out) This was 3-4 HOURS. Not kidding. I was five, and the mosquitos were bad and eating me alive. Dad was commenting about he'd gotten 2-3 bites so they must be out. Well it was about halfways through this hot stinky boring parade of the stifling metal pole barns, and I finally had enough. I pulled away from mom's hand and she wasn't happy about this and was about to open mouth and grab me again. I sat down as soon as I pulled away, right there, and whipped off my shirt. My whole body, arms, legs... were huge welts. I'd had over forty bites. Big quarter sized flat welts. Big red itchy welts. They'd gotten me through my shirt even (thin cotton). We stopped the barn tour, went some where at the fair, they got ahold of some OFF and liberally slathered me and we got some pineapple ice cream. Much more enjoyable, trust me. THEN. They had to go back and finish the barn walk!

Oddly enough, I had a conversation about Mosquitos and thier " hours" the other day. I have lived a few places, not sure how many species there actually are ( I do know there are little ones, medium ones and fly off with livestock size. I was once told by someone not to eat bananas and such before " witching hour"  he claimed that it was adding gravy to thier mashed potatoes for them.  Perhaps this is an old wives tale. I have no problem with Mosquitos that keep hours, at least you know when they are on the prowl. Where I used to go to camp in ME, it took two people to bait a hook while fishing at dusk . You'd bait the hook while your
Buddy slapped you silly.  Oddly enough? 1/2 hour after dark, the find something else to do. Aside from the
Occasional straggler. ( always one in any crowd)...but then again, it only takes one..Larry

Well here we have tigers, which can carry things like West Nile Virus and the city does spray for them. I buy Mosquito Dunk crumbles to toss in the various places (like the city owned drainage ditch at the east edge of my property, we have a low spot right there) and a few others where I can't drain the stuff. And Gallinippers are on the way. These are HUGE. Though last year I had a tiger in the house here after me and it was so large I caught it in a babyfood jar and took it to the extension agent. Though it had the banded legs it was too large... so they sent it downstate and worried we had had the Gallinippers arrive. Nope. Just one huge tiger.

I am getting very good at catching one out of the air, and you will see me rub the hand across my clothes. Sometimes they can survive being grabbed and FLY AWAY. If I rub it across fabric I have a confirmed kill. I am blessed with in later years a certain amount of 'fur' (I am a mammal, and the older I get the glossier and longer my coat gets) which helps with them trying to land on my lower legs and arms. Early warning radar. They still zap me above the backs of the elbows and in the back of the knees (I HATE THAT) as I don't seem to grow any natural fur there of any note. So no warning.

Deb, that looks like something out of a Jurassic Park movie. I have seen some large Mosquitos before but..........I really don't care to be indoors, but, that photo and chart make it look a bit more appealing. Lol.....larry

Larry Bock wrote:Deb, that looks like something out of a Jurassic Park movie. I have seen some large Mosquitos before but..........I really don't care to be indoors, but, that photo and chart make it look a bit more appealing. Lol.....larry

Unless they sneak in the house with you. The one the other day that snacked on my elbow then stupidly sat on the wall afterwards... too bad that one at least hadn't asked me first what time I WANTED to get up first. I guess the termination with extreme prejudice I had to wash off the wall afterwards--hopefully warned other potential jobseekers to attend to their duties more seriously and studiously. (the microwave wasn't THAT far away and displays correct digital time, too. No excuses!)

[I want one of those glass mosquitos. How to package it for transport, I have no idea.]

Yesssss, I can relate! They are bad for so long here. And October seems the worst time for getting bit, like they are after their last supper. And not as particular about what time it is. (maybe altogether different species that time of year...?) Back of the knees and elbows prime territory. Right now the teeny tiny ones are bad in shady areas and where theres shelter (junk)all day, and dusk is a free for all. Last light finds me in my lil pool (giant water trough) and they are hell bent to get some blood out of my scalp. Then by 30 min after full dark they seem to have gone to bed... fortunately, I am not real sensitive to them and don't get bit as much as others. But I do feed plenty of them cause I'm outside most of the day.....

So, what you are telling me?,,,, is that are actually human beings that would not see one of these and not grab thier car keys, ask north or south and run?  Lol.
Gimme this one, look at the size of that mosquito... Lol

Larry Bock wrote:So, what you are telling me?,,,, is that are actually human beings that would not see one of these and not grab thier car keys, ask north or south and run?  Lol.
Gimme this one, look at the size of that mosquito... Lol

Larry, you do realize that third one is made of glass, right?

Senior year prom night we had had a really warm spring so end of April was past ankle long grass in backyard. Our entire area was short on guys, for like a decade (2:1 ratio) and I was in the middle of that decade. Schools were CAREFUL to schedule their proms on different nights and let all the other schools know which one was theirs. Um, then one school knowing we'd picked that night, scheduled theirs the same night. You couldn't get a date for love, money, bribery, blackmail or kidnapping. I wasn't popular so I wasn't going... so on this lovely full moon night I took my reflector telescope out in the back yard and set up to do some moongazing. I was doing the mosquito dance even with reeking of 'go away skeeter' juice... my dad even came out, only time he EVER looked through  my scope too, to see if I was doing alright about not going to the prom. I think I had it good even when my observing got obscured by a brownish cloud. Mosquito brown. To get at me there were a bunch that flew into the tube... and wouldn't come out. So that ended the night... there is that particular brown shade, if you know it you've met more mosquitos than you ever want to meet again.

Deb Rebel wrote:Big quarter sized flat welts. Big red itchy welts.

Yep, me too. Especially if I'm wearing something they can munch on me through so that I don't notice them right away.

Thyri Gullinvargr wrote:

Deb Rebel wrote:Big quarter sized flat welts. Big red itchy welts.

Yep, me too. Especially if I'm wearing something they can munch on me through so that I don't notice them right away.

Uh huh. I used to be skeeter bait. And I'm stuck with the welts for a month!

Now if I notice being bit, I can rough up a plantain leaf, and rub the juice on the bite, and it stops itching and doesn't result in that welt.
I read in a book, can't remember where, that for the author, eating a quarter inch worth of immature plantain seed stalk each day, would keep mosquitoes away. It works for me too. Much fewer bites! We also have found that basil keeps them further away. Hence the purple basil that rings our front yard. Yay for volunteer skeeter repellant!

Joylynn Hardesty wrote: Uh huh. I used to be skeeter bait. And I'm stuck with the welts for a month!

Now if I notice being bit, I can rough up a plantain leaf, and rub the juice on the bite, and it stops itching and doesn't result in that welt.
I read in a book, can't remember where, that for the author, eating a quarter inch worth of immature plantain seed stalk each day, would keep mosquitoes away. It works for me too. Much fewer bites! We also have found that basil keeps them further away. Hence the purple basil that rings our front yard. Yay for volunteer skeeter repellant!

I love my basil, going to plant it everywhere next year. Any basil kinds or just purple?

Plantain? Seed stalk or will leaf stalk work? (Yes I'm old enough to be your grandmother and I still am after something that keeps me from being a chewed bloody goober stuck under a desk somewhere)

Deb Rebel wrote:
I love my basil, going to plant it everywhere next year. Any basil kinds or just purple?

Plantain? Seed stalk or will leaf stalk work? (Yes I'm old enough to be your grandmother and I still am after something that keeps me from being a chewed bloody goober stuck under a desk somewhere)

Plantain. The common yard weed. My yard likes the broadleaf plantain, which prefers some shade. So that is the one I eat for repellant. If your yard is mostly sunny, you are more likely to have narrow leaf plantain. For repellant I've only used the seed stalk of broadleaf. In other aplications, narrow leaf (Plantago, lanceolata) and broadleaf (Plantago, major) are used interchangably. The author was specific in describing the green, undeveloped seed portion of the plant. He discovered this benefit as he was out hunting in the woods, so I assume he was using the broadleaf plantain. He also specifies that he had not found any herbal historical reference for this usage of the plant.  Perhaps the leaf or leaf stalk would also work? (Insert maddening permie comment here: "Try it and see") For rubbing on a bite I have used bruised leaves of whatever plantain is available. Oh, and I suspect there is a build up of some benificial compound of the plant in my system with daily injesting. As long as the seed stalk is available, I'm munching that 1/4 inch every day.

As for the basil, I think that it is any variety that works as a bug repellant. But purple is pretty! Google found this for me. http://naturehacks.com/5-herbs-that-repel-mosquitoes/ When we go out walking the local trail, I'll take some basil leaves with us. I'll tuck some in my hat, some in my socks, and rub bruised leaves over my arms, neck, and legs if I'm in shorts. I have spent over 4 hours out on the trail with this treatment, and only came home with ONE bite. Which I treated with plantain leaf.

Green Deene's take on plantain. http://www.eattheweeds.com/white-mans-little-foot-dwarf-plantain-2/

Narrow leaf plantain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantago_lanceolata

Well I had a bad night last night, finally got to sleep about 5 am, and spouse opened house to ventilate it when I asked him NOT to because my allergies have kicked into INSANE. Including opening the ripped screen bathroom window (taped shut with duct tape, he took it off). So I was awakened about 8:30 and had five bites on wrist and hand I had sticking out and had more singing in my ear in the key of annoying. I bail for the bathroom and Mr. Chirpy Sunshine said 'oh good you're up' and was following through with a list of projects... He barely avoided being hid in the compost. If he was going to let his swarm of alarm skeeters in, he did a lousy job of setting their timers. These are the little ones too, much harder to see and catch and mash into skeetergoo too. So I guess if I set my hubby-alarm for later he won't let the wakeup crew in as early... hm.