Blood Sucking Devils

I think if given the choice, I would trade vampire bats for mosquitoes. Even though the vampire bat takes about two teaspoons of blood for its meal, and a mosquito takes five microliters (5 millionths of a liter), I would rather play host to a blood sucking mammal right now than suffer the incessant irritation of the plague of mosquitoes we are currently experiencing. Why there are so many, I do not know. Perhaps it is the time of year, recent relief from the drought, or just the normal state of things where we live. Whatever the case, we find them in every room of the house and I am usually greeted by a small swarm of them whenever I open the back door. Our sleep is interrupted every night by their bites and our groggy slaps and involuntary scratching in response.

Short of burning cow dung (which I plan to try this evening), we have pretty much exhausted our options of controlling the little bastards. We have tried a bed net, citronella candles, mosquito incense coils, a wall outlet device that looks like an air freshener plug-in, and various chemical sprays in increasing degrees of toxicity. And still I slap and scratch at myself.

I like to know my enemy, so after reading a bit about mosquitoes, I am not surprised they are such a successful species and impossible to get rid of. Craig Childes describes the mosquito thusly in The Animal Dialogues:

“a nightmare insect that will find you anywhere you hide. Of any creature this size, the mosquito has the most complex mechanical wiring known. Fifteen thousand sensory neurons reside in the antennae region alone. The sensory organs of the head are arranged like clockwork. Electron-microscope examination reveals interconnected rods and chambers, pleated dishes and prongs and plates. It looks like a science-fiction world of satellite dishes and receiver towers. These take the mechanical and chemical environment and translate it into a tactical array of electrical impulses to the mosquito’s brain, a brain the size of a pinprick on a piece of paper.”

The mosquito just goes to show that nature is stranger than fiction.

Through trial and error, we have developed a multi-faceted approach to control the mosquitoes. I can’t say we are bite free now, but this approach gives us some relief. For starters, we keep the doors closed at dusk, which seems to be when the hovering blood suckers are most active. Every few days, I apply a repellent spray inside and around the house. I alternate spraying with a chemical called Stockade (active ingredient is cypermethrine) and a stronger one that is still safe for pets, called Derribador (active ingredient is deltametrina). My goal here is to keep the mosquitoes and flies away while mitigating harm to other insects, if possible. Then, as a final low tech option, we sleep under a mosquito net. This sounds romantic, but try it for a while and it becomes annoying.

The mosquitoes have driven me to these steps. Until moving here, I was very much anti-chemical. Uruguayans have a chemical for everything though. Almost half an aisle at the grocery store is devoted to various insecticides and repellents. I guess I am just fitting in.

Know thine enemy. A few interesting facts about mosquitoes.

• Only female mosquitoes bite. They require your blood for egg production.


• If a mosquito is released in still air, it will come directly to the nearest host, even if it is one hundred feet away.


• A mosquito locates you by sensing the carbon dioxide of your breath, lactic acid from your skin, traces of acids released by the bacteria living on your skin and the moisture and heat emitted by your body.


• Even mosquitoes have a purpose. In addition to feeding on you, they also serve as pollinators, feeding on the nectar of flowers.


• One female mosquito may lay 100 to 300 eggs at a time and may average 1,000 to 3,000 offspring during her life span.