Avoiding mosquitoes

There are a number of things you can do to avoid mosquito bites. To treat your own clothing, permethrin spray can be found in camping stores under the label Permanone. Just select the clothes you want to treat and follow the directions. It works well. You may want to use DEET on the parts of your skin that remain exposed. You do not need to use 100% DEET. The higher the concentration the longer it lasts. 25% DEET will last around 5 hours.

If you have more questions you can look at the CDC website: www.cdc.gov, and follow the links to the Q and A's for West Nile virus.

John R.

Great post, John. A more useless insect can not be found anywhere in nature, IMHO. Does anyone know of any redeeming qualitites for the mosquito? I suppose if your "thing" is pestilence and disease then they're perfect.

A couple years ago a pair of researchers at Iowa State University announced that the oil produced by catnip plants was 10 times more effective at repelling mosquitos than DEET. I wonder if the mere presence of catnip plants in the immediate vicinity is sufficient to repel some skeeters or if one has to physically wear the nepetalactone oil?

Since catnip is a fairly easy-to-grow perenial herb, it might be interesting to plant some around your observing site just to test. Since your plants will probably attract every cat in the area, chances are any rodent problems would also be solved