Mosquito Magnet

Transferred from my other blog: The Adventures of Sisterhood. 
First published: 4-30-12 at 11:32 PM EDT

A hummingbird can beat it's wings up to 600 times per minute. A mosquito beats it's wings between 300 and 600 times per second. Mosquitoes fly at 1 to 1.5 miles per hour and beat their wings in synchronization with their lovers. Personally, I also consider them the biggest pests on the planet.

When I get bitten by mosquitoes, the bite will swell to the size of that bone on the outside of my wrist. My wrists are pretty skinny, so that bone sticks out quite a bit. Kylie currently has two mosquito bites on her face as well as a scab from one she most likely had a mild allergic reaction to on her leg. Mosquitoes have been deemed by my family as the worst of pests, worse than large flies, worse than the mice that live in our crawlspace and visit once in a while, worse than roaches and termites. At least, these sentiments are shared by my mother, myself, and surely Kylie.

Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on earth. This isn't exclusively to humans; mosquitoes can carry a huge number of viruses, some of which are more harmful to animals like your dog and cat than yourself. They all require water to breed. Want to kill mosquitoes? Suck the moisture out of your house and wait 5 to 6 months, the lifespan of an average adult mosquito.

In the nature camp I attended 5 or 6 years ago, they required us to have DEET containing bug spray. An adventure club I was a part of in middle school also did. So what exactly is DEET? DEET doesn't actually kill the bugs. It doesn't even work well for every kind of mosquito. But DEET is safe to use on skin and clothes. It stands for N,N-Diethyl-meta-Toluamide, and even after decades of research, scientists are still unsure of how DEET works. It's assumed that they impair the insects' ability to detect life. Mosquitoes are able to sense carbon dioxide (that we output) from 75 feet away. 

Despite their bad eyesight, other senses are sharp. Sense of smell is one of them, and mosquitoes use it well to their advantage. It's probably not as simple as using the awful sent to cover the scent of carbon dioxide, but something along those lines makes your number of mosquito bites decrease exponentially. I don't know, perhaps its as effective as claimed perhaps not. I, however, like to spray Kylie's surroundings and my clothes when going out summer evenings. I don't like to spray it directly on her because of her more sensitive toddler skin. Off! smells awful, but it's far more attractive than huge red bug bites.

-Chichi