Is it me or are these crazy little blood-sucking bastards worse this year? I swear I walk outside and they just swarm on me. Light a cintronella candle? - sorry those dont work for ****. Spray "Off" on yourself and smell like ass for the rest of the day - not to mention you have to take a shower later.... I know its a fact of life in Houston, but this year they just seem to be more frequent and agressive.
i went outside last night to take out the garbage. i was out maybe a total of 40 seconds. by the time i had gotten back inside i had 5 mosquito bites. this is seriously tickin' me off.
Everytime I go back to Houston (1-2 times/month) the mosquitoes are unbelievable, they are bigger and hungrier than ever. Luckily, we don't get that many misquitoes in Austin. LOOK out for standing water!! I had a pot with a water plant in it, my family never paid attention to it and my sister moved it to clean the counter and a swarm of misquitoes flew out of it, they were breeding in my house!!
Lived in Homestead Florida at one time, as a boy, I used to get up real early to see how many I could kill. Believe I set a personal record with 11 in one hand slap. It was like Vietnam out there. The mourning dew was everywhere, it was silent, eerily silent, and that's when you could hear the humming. You couldn't see anything, but you knew they were there, somewhere, in the swamp, ready to ambush everyone.
Actually yes, we pleaded and pleaded with the travel agency and got the honeymoon postponed.. so now the wedding will be at a later date too
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3384381 Rita's pesky offspring are here — and they're hungry Salt-marsh mosquitoes spawned by the storm surge can ride it far inland By LEIGH HOPPER Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle FLYING NUISANCES AP file Salt-marsh mosquitoes: • Typically migrate 30 to 50 miles, but can travel up to 500 miles • Lay eggs in moist soil or on grass • Their eggs can survive two years outside water • Don't carry West Nile virus Bug expert Jim Olson calls them "instant mosquitoes." A massive hatching of far-flying salt-marsh mosquitoes up and down the Gulf Coast — spawned by Hurricane Rita's storm surge — has arrived in Houston, plaguing anyone who ventures outdoors. "Add water, wait seven days and cover (yourself) up," said Olson, a professor in entomology at Texas A&M University. "Because they're coming to town hungry, by the millions." Hurricane Rita's mosquito-making ability was not limited to the storm-struck areas, where the U.S. Air Force has been called in to spray for the nuisance insects. The hurricane pushed water into marshes the entire length of the coast, Olson said, wetting dormant eggs laid in soil or on plants. The surge traveled up bayous, feeding inland marshes such as one near Friendswood and another behind Six Flags AstroWorld. That water increased the reach of the fall equinox tides, which in normal circumstances lead to salt-marsh mosquito hatching this time of year. Bug-breeding intensified in the Ship Channel and Armand Bayou. "Those eggs have been sitting in the high marsh for as long as two years waiting for something like this," Olson said. Cool front won't slow them Here's the good news: These aren't Culex mosquitoes, the ones that carry West Nile and sneak indoors to bite at night. The bad news: These are large, aggressive Aedes mosquitoes that ruin backyard barbecues, attacking in broad daylight. And the females, which must have a blood meal to reproduce, don't mind traveling 30 miles or more. And there is more bad news: The mild cold front pushing temperatures into the 60s today won't slow them down. "I don't think that will be cool enough, no," said Kyle Flatt, an entomologist with Harris County Mosquito Control. "Around here, you don't see much mosquito activity below 55 degrees. It has to get pretty cold and stay that way for a while." Although the mosquitoes, also known as floodwater mosquitoes, can travel as far as 500 miles, Brazoria County is the main source of Houston's problem right now, Olson said. Brazoria County resident James Barnett, former mayor of Freeport, said, "They've probably been a little worse than we've had in the last couple of years." Harris County Mosquito Control is still monitoring for West Nile, which will continue to appear throughout October, and it is spraying areas where infected mosquitoes and birds are found. The city of Houston has tallied 23 human cases so far, and no deaths. The county doesn't spray for salt-marsh mosquitoes, although there is some overlap in areas with West Nile. Nuisance-mosquito spraying falls to companies such as End-O-Pest/Coastal Fumigators, which is busier than usual fogging insects at four chemical plant sites, a country club preparing for a golf tournament and a city park. "In the last three weeks, our business has quadrupled," said End-O-Pest/Coastal Fumigators vice president Harvey West. "I've never seen mosquitoes as bad in Houston as at sundown at Meyer Park (softball fields)." Take usual precautions Short of frequent fogging, the experts say there is little that can be done beyond the usual: Get rid of standing water around the house where the small insects breed, and wear insect repellant that contains DEET to ward off the others. Olson, who has studied the effect of hurricanes on mosquito populations, said floodwater mosquitoes take advantage of a direct hit from a storm in unique ways. They're able to hide in grass and avoid being blown away by wind. But when the storm surge hits, they ride it inland like surfers, into new territory. "The hurricane actually concentrates them," he said, "(it) exacerbates the problem."
There is a new type of mosquito that recently arrived here in Austin (from Houston) called Tiger Mosquitoes. They're more aggressive, stronger bite (stings/itches more), and will attack all day instead of dusk and dawn. Tiger Mosquito Invades the U.S. They have rings on their abdomens like wasps.
i'm a smoker but never in the house, I go outside and in the time it takes to smoke one cig I get lit up, I never or rarely see the little bastrds but they light me up. An average night is four cigs with a few bites per cig so yeah, mosquitoes suck.
I drove home last night and to work this morning with the a/c off and the windows rolled down. Not one mosquito bite. It was very pleasant and will only be better tomorrow.
