You’re not the only creature out there frolicking under the summer sun.
If you did any backyard gardening in June, you probably got up and close to the creepy-crawlies in our soil. It seemed to have rained all of June in Iowa, forming nice little breeding ponds for mosquitoes and quite a buzz around the Juneberry bushes. Now that July fruit is ripening I still have to fight off five mosquitoes for every berry. It gets so bad I’m not sure if my fingers are stained with blood or blackberry juice. Ugh, bugs.
I’m from Minnesota. To mosquitoes, let me add deer flies and horse flies, wood ticks and lake leeches.
What critters pester in your neck of the woods? How do you handle them?
Mosquitoes are today’s topic because they’re the most prevalent. They’re the bearers of bad news when they bore into our skin: malaria, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and West Nile virus commonly afflict humans. If you’re spared a disease, you could cause a skin infection by scratching that swollen, red, itchy bite.
Do you remember reading the cute children’s book explaining Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears? It’s high time someone write Why Mosquitoes Make People Sweat and Ache and Vomit and its sequel Why Mosquitoes Love your Backyard and How to Make them Hate It and Go Away. So here goes.
Be a Skeeter Homebreaker
Spraying bug spray all over the place to make the mosquitoes go away but not getting rid of where they live, play, and make more blood-sucking babies would be like deodorizing your baby’s behind instead of changing the dirty diaper or misting boarding school air freshener in your pampered son’s trashed room instead of telling him to clean up. Lots of chemicals in the air, no long-term solution, just all around laziness.
1.) Clean ‘er up
Mosquitoes love trashed yards. Water collects in the crevices of the junk, and so skeeters get down and dirty in there and breed like crazy. If you’ve ever cut your grass and found a car, you just might be a redneck and you most definitely have a red neck from itchy mosquito bites.
2.) Keep it dry
Mosquitoes reproduce in water beds. Don’t permit stagnant water on your property. If it’s rained so much the soil can’t absorb all the moisture, allow kids to go jump in all those puddles and bust up some mosquito larvae’s lairs.
Put up a Bite-free Barrier
1.) Long pants and long sleeves
I’ve built up such a tolerance to heat that it’s no sweat to wear fall clothes in summer temps. Thankfully, the weather is on your side with mosquito habits. Mosquitoes are most active during dawn and dusk, which happen to be the coolest times of day and most comfortable to be completely covered up with clothing.
2.) Window screens
In all my time in Latin America, I saw only one place with a “screened” window. Chicken wire was nailed up in somewhat proximity to three of the corners. If a mosquito, fly, snake, or small bat couldn’t squeeze through the 2-inch wide chicken wire, it could just as well find its way in through the gaping wide-open fourth corner.
It looked tacky to tack up bright green gardening net on my windows, but it just so happened to match the color of my bed netting.
3.) Bed netting
There might not be screens on the windows if you travel to the tropics, so buy a mosquito net impregnated with permethrin for added repellant. Drape the mesh around your bed and pretend it’s an elegant canopy.
Natural Repellants
Douse yourself with deet-free insect repellant before going through prime mosquito territory, like hiking through a swamp. These have less skin irritants than the harsh chemical deet (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) and are more gentle but just as effective.
1.) Picaridin
Look for 20% picaridin. Try Sawyer Fisherman’s Formula.
2.) Lemon eucalyptus
Look for 30% oil of lemon eucalyptus. Try Repel Lemon Eucalyptus.
Adjust your Attitude
1.) Take a symbiotic pest management approach. Embrace into your outdoor play area what eats mosquitoes in the food web. Don’t break spider webs. Let songbirds sing in your backyard.
2.) Adhere to ahimsa, the philosophy of nonviolence toward all living beings. Don’t make yourself a martyr and allow mama mosquitoes to suck your blood in an attempt to get more karma, because I’m pretty sure that kind of intent will only backfire. I’d like to interpret ahimsa as avoidance of mosquitoes through the healthy practices of cleanliness, timing, and netting we talked about, so that you avoid causing harm to yourself through mosquito-vector disease.
3.) Take on a Buddhist wholesome attitude towards all sentient beings and don’t let yourself get “bugged” by them. Many winged bugs we like to swat at happen to pollinate the pretty flowers we like to look at. Try meditating in a field of flowers to lower your insect angst.
May you be free of sunburn and mosquito bites. May your summer be blissful.
Carrie is an environmental educator, anthropologist, and translator. She took her passions for ecological, health, and women’s rights advocacy from the offices of Washington, D.C. to the streets of South America. Now in Colombia, she is slowly opening women’s eyes to the wonders of “la copita de luna” (Moon Cup) and Keepers.
