Skeeter dance

Tis the time of the year. One way to get this ol' permie moving her keyster...

I have always smelled like smorgas-blood to mosquitos, many stories over the year. If there is one in the building she will find me for lunch.

I am also a wool bearing mammal, which helps with early warning radar, in some spots only. They can still get me behind the back top of elbow and in the backs of my knees (and I really hate that)

Worst is when my dance partner sings in my ear in the key of annoying... especially when I was mostly asleep. (hint, if you pick some of the rest of the body you might get away before I wake up. Announcing yourself is like assuring you will win a Darwin award.)

Usually it involves some movements when the early warning system gets ruffled to swat the incoming, or grab out of air and run hand across jeans or teeshirt to make sure they don't fly away. This is what gets me, you can grab and squeeze and they will fly away. Like a zombie-skeeter.

As a kid it also involved announcing "skeeter" then swatting said critter on someone else. We had to institute you better have something to show the swat-ee or you were in trouble. (see zombie-skeeter that flies off afterwards)

Flavor basting, aka mosquito repellant. I swear they just lick it off and consider it marinade.

(holy Toledo, I went to look for a picture and there is such a thing for real, a song with music and dance routine... wow. I'm the rank amateur then, other than my dance is either her=0 and me=1 or her=1 and me=itchy. )

But it is the season and even though we went around and dumped everything and put skeeter dunk crumbles in what we couldn't dump, they are everywhere and like to sneak in with us as we come into the house, then show up later for their snack. It's bad if you have to resort to skeeter-b-gone on the bed, pillowcase and blankets just like you were camping, just to get some sleep. I just sewed some mosquito netting for the bed, now only if I can train my other half to keep it CLOSED so they don't join us...

The swat, gyrations and dance moves with live flying partner(s) are not something that can be really choreographed but there are times I envy cows and horses as they have a nice big tail to attempt to scare those off. Growing three feet of hair doesn't help either. Sigh.

A couple things that might help that: ..We encourage and protect barn swallows in the bottom of the barn. They eat the biters all day. We do the same for bats in the top of the barn. They eat all night. As for us, we eat a certain amount of garlic. There's no noticeable aroma to people, but there's enough to repel mosquitos. We also don't allow any standing, stagnant water. We have zero problem.

I eat a lot of garlic. I have a bat house and it is inhabited. I dump what I can find for standing water. For at least five decades I'm the one that gets sampled. I've done many variations of a sort of strange prance dance at times, complete with swatting, catching and smearing gestures, and a soundtrack of less than nice words. I think the funky chicken has more grace than me being the main course... sigh.

Does citronella, like Avon Skin So Soft, not work to keep mosquitoes away for you?  It can be homemade so you know what ingredients are in it.

Also I believe lemon balm is suppose to repel them.

Anne Miller wrote:Does citronella, like Avon Skin So Soft, not work to keep mosquitoes away for you?  It can be homemade so you know what ingredients are in it.

Also I believe lemon balm is suppose to repel them.

Skin-So-Soft is flavor basting. Citronella they laugh at and lemon balm too. The only thing that sends them packing is liberal amounts of nearly pure DEET and I hate that stuff. Go figure, in the Louisiana bayou area they buy SSS in massive quantities and swear by it. I told my local Avon rep about that, she had wondered about seeing that in her order stuff, about being able to buy huge quantities of it... she offered I could order that way and I had to tell her it doesn't work for me, but that's why she was seeing that option.

Someone mentioned broad and narrow leaf plantain, consuming small amounts of the seed stalk, every day. I am looking for some. They claimed they were like me, the one the mosquitos always sampled.

Thanks for the suggestions Anne. Unfortunately I need sterner stuff... (and I have a fairly common blood type so it can't be I'm the 'rare exotic snack' either)

This has nothing to do with skeeters. But it does have to do with dancing and biting insects
 I go clamming a few times a year for cherrystones. We don't use rakes, we use our feet and toes to " feel" for them. We actually go in the pitch dark some times. When we locate a good spot, the " Clam Dance" begins.
 We begin to circle and the circle gets larger as we gently bounce up an down to sink a few more inches with every step, thin is interrupted by the "dip" every few moments to submerge ourselves to retrieve the clam. Clams use the buddy system and many times the are several dips in a row, then back to " Clam Dancing".
There are at times large bright green metallic horse flies who's bite is no laughing matter. These creatures also initiate a "dip".  It takes a trained eye to determine if you buddy is happily on a hot spot or unhappily being attacked by an insect that produces a very large welt.   Lol.  Larry.

Don't get me started about horseflies.

When I was a teen we purchased a used John Deere 4020. Not a really big tractor but bigger than our small fleet of John Deere B's. It had a cab on it. This isn't one of these nice modern tractors. No air, no fan, no sound deadening, it would protect you from sun sorta and things of that nature. It trapped lots of horseflies in there that would chew you up. We all hated that cab but my father refused to take it off. You drove it with the back door wired open and your hat in one hand to wave back there behind you to try to chase them off. This went on for about a month until everyone staged a revolt and REFUSED to get on that tractor again, ALL of us. My dad had to drive it that day. Next day he took the cab off. We ended up selling it to some fool that wanted a cab...

Here it's the little buffalo flies. They are small. They come in, land, want to sit there for about a minute, THEN bite you. If you chase them off they circle and come back to the EXACT SAME SPOT to land again. They always need that sitting time and are persistent about it. I had some jalapeno peppers at an event, but no repellant and rubbed that on the back of my calves and knees where they were chewing me up. It helped some. The bites itch incredibly, you get a little hard 'rock' that takes awhile to heal up and go away.

Here are some things I learned by searching "does sulfur repel mosquitoes"  as we use it to repel chiggers, so I thought it might help with mosquitoes.  They don't like me so I don't have a problem with them.

"There is no hard evidence to support the belief that eating sulfur will repel mosquitoes, but it is rumored that military personnel have practiced eating match heads to repel mosquitoes and various ticks. A recipe that is said to have been passed down over the generations as a mosquito repellent includes sulfur and does not use match heads which could potentially contain other harmful chemicals.

Thoroughly mix together 2 tsp. sulfur, 1 tsp. of Cream of Tartar and 1 pint of honey in a pint jar. Sulfur can be found over the counter in most pharmacies.

Take 1 tsp. of this recipe every day. It will take about two weeks for the repellent to become effective.

Continue consuming this recipe throughout the mosquito season. Be certain to thoroughly mix this recipe before consuming it."

http://www.ehow.com/how_5665976_eat-sulfur-mosquito-repellent.htmlwebpage


Cinnamon leaf oil (one study found it was more effective at killing mosquitoes than DEET)
Clear vanilla oil14 mixed with olive oil
Wash with citronella soap, and then put some 100 percent pure citronella essential oil on your skin. Java Citronella is considered the highest quality citronella on the market
Catnip oil (according to one study, this oil is 10 times more effective than DEET)15
Lemon eucalyptus was found very effective in a 2014 Australian study;16 a mixture of 32 percent lemon eucalyptus oil provided more than 95 percent protection for three hours, compared to a 40 percent DEET repellent that gave 100 percent protection for seven hours

Use a natural formula  that contains a combination of citronella, lemongrass oil, peppermint oil and vanillin to repel mosquitoes, fleas, chiggers, ticks, and other biting insects

whttp://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/08/23/mosquito-repellent.aspxebpage

Anne I will look into  a few of those.

I'm on the order of half an ounce of 95% DEET on an outfit of hat to shoes (long sleeves and long pants) will give me one week of camping without too many samples. And the other half an ounce goes on the sleeping bag and pillow. Saving several drops for putting on back of neck and such for that week. 40% DEET they laugh at. I've actually offered to be a volunteer test subject for mosquito repellants.

The Cinnamon Leaf Oil I've never heard of. I will look that up. Thank you. I am going to look at that mix of oils as well.