Hey Silly,

They are already bad! I've been spraying my clothing, including my hat, with Deep Woods Off. (I don't like to spray it on my skin.) Of course, the bloodsuckers still like to land on any exposed skin.

I have Bt dunks in our ponds, but can't afford to put them in the creek and the nine million rain puddles.

Between the rain and the skeeters, this will be a summer to remember.

Dawn

Skeeter lovers everywhere--------you are emitting to much carbon dioxide! (At least that is what the scientist say.)

We had notice in the Sunday paper that spraying in town will begin this week. It is usually much later. I read all the warnings about what else the insecticide will kill, flies, gnats, and bees. It has ether in it so they are telling everyone if you are a beekeeper you need to cover the hives.

Skeeters bite me on the back of my knees! I have not had ciggers in years. When I was living at Lake Texoma with my grandparents I would be covered will everywhere the clothing was tight or close to the skin.

I have my deep woods off at the back door cause I still will need it. Ticks bothering anyone?

Steffie

Ticks? They all drowned here. :-)

Dawn

I usually put on spray when I go out early in the morning and late in the evening. Guess it's going to be an all day long thing now.

Thank goodness it's not RAINING!

Silly

Steffie,

So kind of them to poison everyone's environment, whether they want to be poisoned or not! When the folks in Dallas go nuts (after somebody pops up with West Nile Virus) and start spraying neighborhoods for mosquitoes, some of the people with water gardens always lose some of their fish...it never faisl!

We don't have much of a tick problem here. I think the guineas eat them all. Chiggers are sometimes a problem, but I haven't managed to get into any of them yet. I try to remember to spray my shoes/socks/pantlegs once or twice a day, especially if I am mowing. I hate chiggers!

Randy,

Who says it isn't raining? Well, OK, it is not raining NOW, but it rained here this a.m. Another 7/10s of an inch. If you are counting, that is about 8" of rain for us in the last 10 days.

And, y'all, this isn't really mosquito-related, but....the really large turtle from our pond came to the back porch today. He had a leech attached to him so DS removed it. First, I never thought about leeches, but guess they are in the pond. Secondly, I wonder if he came to the porch seeking help, or was just hanging around there and lucked into having DS see and remove his leech?

Since it is too wet outside to do anything in the yard or garden, I am pondering the big mysteries of life....like why did the turtle come up to the back porch? lol

Dawn

I got this in my mail a few days ago. Never tried them, but who knows, maybe some of these are good?

Mosquitoes prepare to be repelled!!!!!

Use Bounce Fabric Softener Sheets...Best thing ever used in
Louisiana..just wipe on & go..Great for Babies

Bob, a fisherman, takes one vitamin B-1 tablet a day
April through October . He said it works. He was right.
Hasn't had a mosquito bite in 33 years. Try it.
Every one he has talked into trying it works on them.
Vitimin B-1( Thiamine Hydrochloride 100 mg.)

If you eat bananas,
the mosquitos like you, - something about the banana oil
as your body processes it.
Stop eating bananas for the summer and the mosquitos
will be much less interested.

This is going to floor you, but one of the best
insect repellents someone found (who is in the woods
every day), is Vick's Vaporub.

Plant marigolds around the yard, the flowers give off
a smell that bugs do not like,
so plant some in that garden also to help ward
off bugs without using insecticides.

"Tough guy" Marines who spend a great deal of time
"camping out" say that the very best mosquito
repellant you can use is
Avon Skin-So-Soft bath oil mixed about
half and half with alcohol.

One of the best natural insect repellants that I've discovered
is made from the clear real vanilla. This is the pure Vanilla that is sold in Mexico. It works great for mosquitoes and ticks,
don't know about other insects.

When all else fails--get a frog

Fight West Nile..pass this along to all your friends in skeeter land!!!

****donÂt forget your pets! a nice bounce sheet tucked under their collar when they go outside will protect them as well!!!***

Here in McAlester, the mosquitoes are already very bad. I was out this morning filling the birdfeeders with seed, and I was nearly eaten alive.

I can see it now. Bounce fabric softener sheets wrapped around my legs and arms, smelling like fried ice cream, hopped up on Vitamins and no banana peels for my roses. The neighbors think I am a crazy old lady anyway, now they will have someone come and get me.

I guess I dont have to worry about it, after Friday I wont have any mos, gnats, flies, or bees. I'll just use my Mexican vanilla in my homemade ice cream.

Oh, dont let those Marines kid ya------I am married to one------they probably drink the Avon and alcohol concoction. Just joking! : )

Steffie

LOL!! Steffie that was funny! My Dad was on a Nuclear Sub in the 70's - and they convinced their commander that the only way to clean a certain part of the reactor was with grain alcohol... he said they give it a few squirts and then give themselves a few squirts. Sailors AND Marines.....

I can't remember the last time I was actually bitten by a mosquito, and I haven't seen many around the yard. DS hasn't gotten bit either. I think it's becuase they've been feasting on DH... poor thing, he's got bites everywhere... and he's such a baby about it! Maybe mosquitos like the "whinny" DNA more than the "suck-it-up-and-deal-with-it" DNA. ;))

Courtney

Courtney,
You are not going to believe this, we were in the Corp during the 70s and stationed in Hawaii. I say "we" cause Marine wives are in the Corp as well. You have to experience it to believe it. Anyway, had some really good friends, both sailors and marines.

One other thing, my daughter is named Courtney. She is also starting the world of gardening and I love to read your posts cause she has asked me some of the same questions.

Skeeters bite me but since the itching and welt is caused by allergic reaction, I think over the yrs I have built up a tolerance and I have been on Nutrisystem for several months and I think my chemistry has changed some what.

My DH complains of them buzzing him but he is never bitten so I just look to the sky and request patience! Whining is a gift for some people. :)

Steffie

Great posts, everybody. Y'all crack me up! ;~)

Dawn, We had a huge turtle come up to our shop door and dig a big hole last week. I think she was laying eggs when I saw her. It is gravel all around our shop and she had dug through the gravel down into the mud, and it was really muddy looking beneath her. I meant to take a picture of her but I got side tracked feeding the horses, and when I remembered later, she was gone and her spot was covered up and you couldn't tell it had been disturbed. Strange the turtle came to your house with a leach on it... But maybe it was coming there to lay eggs too. Who knows. :)
Dawna

Thanks for all of the information. When do these skeeters really come out? I will stop my banana eating when they do. Today I will get B-1 and Bounce.

My family has a reaction to Bounce so I would only rub it on a small area until you know your skin can tolerate it. When we lived in Alaska we always used Avon Skin So Soft bath oil, but not as bath oil. We rubbed it on our skin. In fact all of our tackle boxes and most of our friends tackle boxes had a bottle of Skin So Soft in them. I find it NOT to be a pleasant scent, but the mosquito don't like it either, so it works.

Hi Everyone!

The mosquitoes are SO BAD that I can not believe it.

Every evening we take the dogs out to the big pasture west of the barn to play ball. We throw tennis balls and they retrieve them. We do it every night. Until yesterday, we had not had too much of a problem with mosquitoes, although I do have them buzzing around me every day. Well, last night there were CLOUDS of mosquitoes everywhere in that pasture and they were hungry. I would say there were thousands of them. So, this afternoon we are going to spray ourselves heavily with Deep Woods Off and then mow down the tall grass in that pasture. I know that will help a little, but think we may end up spraying that area as well. It was unbelieveable how many there were.

Dawna,

The turtle could have been looking for a place to lay eggs. We already have some baby turtles around, but that doesn't mean she is their mother. I had just assumed she was. Or, maybe they lay more than one batch of eggs in a year? I don't know much about turtles.

Jess,

Here at our house, the mosquitoes are especially bad early in the day, say from shortly after sunrise until mid-morning, and then they are really, really bad from about 6 p.m. on. Some of them are always around, though, no matter what time of day it is.

Soonergrandmom, We like the Avon Skin-So-Soft bath oil as a mosquito repellent also. I don't like the smell of it either, but it does work!

Today at Wal-Mart I noticed they had a DEET product that was 98% DEET, which I find to be unbelievable. I don't even like spraying the Deep Woods Off on my skin and it is only 25% DEET. I would never use the 98% DEET and find it hard to believe they sell it at that concentration.

I cannot even imagine what kind of problems we will have with mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile Virus, encephalitis and meningitis this year.

Dawn

Since we're talking about flying, annoying critters, how many different kinds of wasps live in OK??? I have never seen so many different breeds. Red ones, black ones, and really pretty blue one, black and yellow ones... I'm starting to understand why it took so long for OK to become a state!! Tarantulas, Brown Recluse, Scorpions, Black Widows, dozens of wasps.... Hmm lets head west to OK, honey!!! (just kidding... I have an OK drivers license now, so I guess that officially makes me an Okie!)

Steffieok - Thanks for your post! The company that I used to work for had me working at Camp Pendleton, I was the only Navy wife in the bunch. Marine wives are as tough (if not tougher) than their hubbies - that's for sure!!! A really good friend of mine just found out that they are getting recruiting duty in... after 3 tours to the "Sandbox" - they DESERVE recruiting duty! I can't wait until they get to the midwest, so we can hang out again!

I have a really funny story to tell you about the first Gunny that I met. We'll have to meet at a plant swap or something sometime, I'm sure you'll appreciate it!

Tell your daughter "Hi" for me ~ There aren't too many of us named Courtney that are over the age of 10!! It seems to be much more popular in recent years than it was 30 plus years ago...

Courtney

Hi Courtney!

I think we have every sort of insect and arachnid you can imagine. I see insects here that I never saw in 39 years in Fort Worth. To be fair, though, we were in an older, well-established neighborhood there and we are in a wild, untamed rural area here.

I've linked a website you might find interesting. It identifies a lot of the commonly seen Oklahoma insect pests.

Every time I think I have figured out what I am generally seeing, a new one pops up. I suspect one reason we have such a variety is because Oklahoma, compared to many older and more highly developed states, still has a lot of raw, undeveloped land close to cities and towns.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: OK BugGuide

If you really want to get rid of mosquitoes, put up a bat house. They LOVE mosquitoes.

I'm sorry to hear they are going to spray, Steffie. The spray will kill all the butterfly and moth cateprillars. Too bad. If they ever say they are going to do it in the city, I will have to call them and say "NO"!!!!! It's not worth it for the loss of other beneficial insects. I haven't had that many lately. Maybe my beneficials are getting the mosquitoes???? Sometimes it's best to allow mother nature to intervene instead of we idiot humans who so far have managed to destroy much more than we nurture.

Susan

Susan,

So, are you saying that OKC does not routinely spray for mosquitoes? That is great!!

Dallas routinely sprays, and Fort Worth does not spray as much, although any widespread spraying is incredibly harmful to the beneficials.

We have trillions of mosquitoes in our county. The birds, bats and other beneficials just cannot eat them all. We have had eight inches of rain in the last ten days, and there is standing water EVERYWHERE in fields and pastures, bar ditches and even in people's lawns and gardens. With that kind of standing water, the darned things are going to hatch. I think the wild predators will eventually get them under control, but it is going to take a while.

The skeeters are not too bad up close to the house, so I think the purple martins and bats are doing their thing pretty effectively there. But, go 100 yards away from the house in any direction, and you are skeeter bait!

We need some nice sunny, dry, hot days to dry up all the excess moisture, and I believe this week we are going to have exactly those conditions.

The sun is shining, and I am GLAD!

Dawn

They don't spray that I know of, Dawn. I doubt they would spend the money.

I'm so glad, too, because I have a plethora butterflies out there this morning. My rotten banana has Hackberries, Tawnies, Red Admirals, Question Marks, and the biggest Mourning Cloaks I've ever seen, all nectaring on it. Other than those, we have Cabbages Whites, Sleepy Oranges, Pearl Crescents, Swallowtails, Eastern Tailed Blues, Skippers, and Cloudless Sulphurs, too. I would hate to think I might lose all that from a dumb ole mosquitoe spraying truck. I'd rather risk having West Nile instead.

Susan

Susan, I know they are going to kill everything! Then on top of that I have to send in extra money on my water bill for the spraying fee. No pay, no H2O! The chances of getting West Nile are not that scary if you think of all the other things you can catch or will kill you if you are exposed.

I have so many birds I have been feeding that just hang around I was really not concerned about the bugs etc. Hungry birds can really keep insect pops down, at least here. Of course I have to remember I have the insectide queen in the neighborhood so what is a little more :(

I think tomorrow night is the night they will be by with the truck. They are telling people not to let the kids out to follow the truck. Reminds me of when I was a kid and they came through the neighborhoods spraying DDT. It is a wonder we all didn't just keel over and go into respiratory arrest.

I have such an assortment of butterflies and moths I just want to spit! I am also a little concerned about all the baby birds I have now in every crepe myrtle and tree I have. Our yard has more sounds and activity then we have had in years and I was just loving it.

Okay, enough of that. It is late so I will close for now. Steffie

Steffie,

I cannot believe they spray their toxic chemicals whether you want them or not, and then they charge you for it That is so wrong. Do you know what chemical they are going to use? I just hate that it is going to happen.

Whenever widespread chemical spraying occurs, so many beneficial insects are killed, and of course, the birds, frogs, etc. who eat those chemically-treated bugs are at risk of dying also. When we had a horrendous grasshopper problem here in the early 2000s, a lot of ranchers, farmers and residents sprayed chemicals quite heavily. These same people then complained mightily about how we didn't have any bluebirds (and other songbirds) for the next 2 or 3 years. Gee, I wonder what happened to the birds at the exact same time the bugs were nuked?

I know you will lose many of the butterflies and moths you have been enjoying and that is so regrettable. A lot of insects (INCLUDING adult mosquitoes) will survive the spraying, though, if they seek shelter before the chemicals hit them.

Many organic activists insist that the spraying is not even that effective. The truth is that mosquitoes have a short life cycle anyway, so you will see a natural decrease in their numbers about 4 to 6 weeks following the kind of major population explosion you see after an extremely rainy period. So, even if the city wasn't spraying, you would see a population decrease.....and the city will say it was caused by the spraying of course.

The organic gardening community in Fort Worth fought to prevent widespread spraying in 2000 and they WON! Actually, Fort Worth had not done widespread spraying since the early 1990s, but was under considerable pressure by residents to 'do something' about the mosquitoes in 2002. I am proud that Fort Worth chose to go the least toxic route. I've linked a page that has their mosquito-spraying philosophy on it in case anyone is interested. It takes city officials with courage to stand up to the unenlightened members of the community who are screaming for mosquito spraying.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: A Common-sense Approach to Mosquito Control

Wow. I'm sorry to hear that y'all are having such problems with the skeeters. Personally, I never do. I can't remember the last time a mosquito actually bit me and left a welt.

I'll be hearing a lot about them, though. I'm doing a story next week about what communities in our coverage area are doing to combat the mosquitoes.

Steffie - one thing you could do, is cover your plants with sheets. I know you probably have too many plants to cover all, but you could at least cover your most popular nectar and host plants to protect them from the spray.

Susan

The insecticide is a derivative for pyrethria (sp) made from the Egyptian lilly. We used it when I lived in Hawaii to control the roaches in homes. The method of spraying requires the use of ether. From zoology etc in college it is the ether that causes the problems with killing off the beneficials. WE are basically gassing the poor little critters.

I have noted that last year when they sprayed late in summer the insects just moved from one part of the city to the other during the spraying. If people just had good hygiene in the yard we would not have near the problems and as I said we have never had a report disease at this time from skeeters. WE do have lots of snake bites so maybe they should do a random snake kill!!!!!!!!!!

Just thinking of all the absurd things that man will do to make himself comfy. If they spray tonight I am praying for rain. That will help.

However, you can already tell they are starting to spray parts of the city cause I have already noticed a decrease of flutterby activity and no bees.

Happy gardening everyone----I am in depressive mode. Steffie

Jeff,

I wonder if any of the cities that spray have actual scientific research that shows the spraying results in fewer mosquitoes or not? (Or, is spraying just something cities do because many citizens expect them to do it? Enquiring minds want to know!)

Susan,

Covering the plants could help the beneficials, don't you think? I think that it a great idea and one well worth trying.

Steffie,

Pyrethrum products are technically organic, but they often have a synthetic synergist called Piperonyl Butoxide, which research has linked to tumors in lab rats, an increased risk of leukemia, disruption in the function of sex hormones, and increased risk of allergic reactions, including asthma and heart attacks. Why in the world do cities expose their citizens to these chemicals?

With all the storms raging across Oklahoma last night, I am hoping you got rain right AFTER they sprayed! And I hope God sends rain every time the city sprays.

Sorry you are feeling depressed. I know that I would feel exactly the same way if our local officials were spraying here. Luckily, the beneficials, butterflies and moths will rebound, but it always takes a while. Hang in there. It will get better, somehow. Or, move to a really rural area, like we did, in a county that barely has the funds to maintain the roads, and mow the roadsides once or twice a year. Our county couldn't afford to spray even if it wanted to, so I feel relatively 'safe' here.

It started raining here about 20 minutes ago, so if you did not get rain last night, maybe you will have a rain shower this morning.

Dawn