All About Mosquitoes (And How To Deal With Them This Summer)
Imagine this: you were just minding your own business, trying to get a glass of water from the kitchen, and you suddenly feel a prick on your leg? You look down and you see a big red welt, itching and throbbing enough to make anyone mad. You try to find the buzzing culprit, but there’s nothing around you; it’s gone as quickly as it came. It keeps biting, even attacking in the dead of night, leaving you covered in welts. This small creature is especially annoying in the summer, a time when mosquitoes are the most active in laying eggs for more future bloodsuckers to rise.
Firstly, where do they hide? For starters, think of how mosquitoes work. Most of their species never come out during the daytime, as they would dehydrate and burn up due to sunlight alone. As a result, start looking for mosquitoes in darker places. If there are mosquitoes outside, look near rocks, logs, trees, and even the grass if it’s large enough. Inside, look under desks, corners of the room, especially closets. Keep watch, however, shining some light causes them to wake up, and even then, other mosquitoes aren’t as restrained to the nighttime hours.
While not exactly a foolproof strategy, there is a way to lure out any mosquitoes still bugging you out (sorry for the pun). Due to some species of mosquito being attracted to light, use a small flashlight, or even a phone, to draw out any of them in the dark. After a while, there should be the telltale buzzing of a mosquito, and smash it accordingly. If that doesn’t work, use fans! Mosquitoes are very weak flyers, so if you are unable to kill them, just make sure that they never get a chance to land!
Not only should you look in the dark; you should also look in water. Female mosquitoes are most focused on reproducing and, unfortunately, human blood is most effective at laying more larvae. However, there are ways to fight these critters. More importantly, standing water. Mosquito eggs must need pools of water to allow them to hatch, and it can even take a small shot glass to allow these mosquitoes to grow. As such, explore every inch of your home for any small traces of water. Look closely at these traces, any eggs would look like clusters seen below.
When dealing with these eggs, do not dump them out in hopes that they would be destroyed. Instead, dump oil, water, or shampoo into it. Even a milligram will cause the larvae or eggs to die, and as a result, prevents other mosquitoes from laying eggs within the same water source. However, there are other places that eggs can grow, especially outside, where the puddles and dewdrops from nature alone can help grow dozens of eggs. In that case, there isn’t really a way to deal with these situations, rather prevention. Keep your house secure from any holes, make sure any water sources outside can be avoided, and make sure any outside drainage systems are regularly cleaned. While it may seem tedious to keep up these strategies over the summer, just remember, by winter these creatures will begin to hibernate and die out due to their low life span. So keep vigilance, these blood-suckers will soon sleep soon!