Published June 6, 2004 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
It’s June now and even though our spring was about as pleasant as a bikini party on the north coast of Scotland, we need to prepare for skeeters.
Skeeters, of course, are mosquitoes, the small, blood-sucking creatures that thrive in the woods of northern Minnesota. Since viewing portions of the movie “Skeeters,” on the SciFi channel, I refer to them as skeeters, even though I’m told that doing so is annoying. We’ll see about that.
Today, I focus not on the large, mutated mosquitoes from the movie, but the regular kind. I’m talking about the kind that buzz around your room at night, spinning around and around, closer to your ear – until, in a fit of rage, you flip on the light to squash them, fail to find them, go back to bed only to hear them buzz AGAIN, and LOUDER, so you spray your whole room down with bug spray and spend the rest of the night listening to sad, mournful sounds of dying mosquitoes as you gasp for oxygen. Those mosquitoes never end up on SciFi movies, but they are another example of nature’s power to mess with us when so inclined.
Mosquitoes in the house cause problems, but nothing compares to mosquitoes on their home turf – out in the woods. I grew up in the swamps of McDavitt Township, where there are so many mosquitoes they’ve formed a union (Blood Suckers and Egg Layers, Local 12), so I’m very familiar with their handiwork. We didn’t have cable in Zim, but the good folks at CNN have released a list of anti-mosquito tactics to use this summer.
* Zappers. The experts don’t recommend bug zappers for killing skeeters. Why put a thing on your porch that attracts nuisance insects? Chances are, once they come in from the woods, they’ll be more interested in the family of delicious humans than the buzzing death ray.
* Carbon dioxide devices. These have been proven effective at capturing skeeters, but purchasing something that produces carbon dioxide gas and letting it work quietly in the corner seems ill-advised. Why not “Cap’n Sleepy’s Radon Maker?” It just doesn’t seem right.
* DEET. You’ll smell like the air above a chemical plant, but if you’re cool with that, classic “bug dope” still works.
* Bats. Like bug zappers, bats don’t kill as many skeeters as people think they do. Therefore, raising an army of winged minions to defeat the skeeters remains a cumbersome and cost-prohibitive venture. (Did you hear that, Mr. Wayne? This is the last time we do business!)
* Ultrasonic devices. Experts say that any device claiming to use ultrasonic sound to drive away mosquitoes is actually much more effective at driving paper money out of your wallet.
* Dunks. What’s a dunk? It’s a product you can drop in standing water to eliminate mosquito larvae. They look like Lifesavers candy, but only come in one flavor – “Dead Skeeter.”
* Citronella candles. Like a lot of anti-skeeter devices, these candles are more hype, say the experts at CNN. The ones that work have to burn constantly to have effect. I have no proof, but a more cost-effective measure might be to burn old tires. Nothing chokes out the skeeters like unremitting black smoke.
* Common Sense. Just like the national debt, the experts’ top solution to skeeters is common sense. It boils down like this: if you don’t want to get bit by mosquitoes, avoid all locations that might possibly have skeeters. There you have it. I guess I’ll see everybody back here sometime next November. Happy Skeeter Season!
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.