Re: [gardeners] Re: mosquitos
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Fri, 14 Aug 1998 14:30:59
At 09:27 AM 8/14/98 +0000, you wrote:
>According to the sober-minded scientists, Deet is harmful to the
>young, the middle-aged, the old, and the antique. It should be
>used only if the mosquitos threaten to carry you off. Otherwise,
>it should be avoided.
>
>May I suggest sulfur? Buy a quarter pound or so from the druggist,
>put into a clean sock, tie up the end, and before you go out beat
>yourself about the limbs, etc. with the sock. Can't hurt you and the
>mosquitos think you smell something awful. Of course, you tend to
>want to avoid yourself, too, but you can't have everything!
>
>Failing that, find a disgruntled recent bride and talk her out of her
>wedding veil. Swathe yourself from head to toe in her bridal tulle
>and move very, very slowly as you perambulate on your garden stroll.
>
>Failing that, seal all windows and doors with flour-and-water paste,
>and stay indoors. (This presupposes you have carefully extracted all
>mosquitos from your homestead before you sealed it up.)
>
>Actually, the easiest thing is to get rid of all standing water. This
>solution is possible in some areas, but impractical in Louisiana and
>Florida; those unfortunate states are only sponges of soil floating
>on liquid.
>
>You *could* move? Is that an option? Or should we just learn to be
>tolerant of our brothers the mosquitos -- and accept them for what
>they are -- and . . . . . Oh well, you know the rest of that speech.
>
>Pat (who is scratching as she types; here the problem is the chigger)
>
Well, that keeps us from moving up where you are. Miz Anne is a chigger
magnet. When we lived in chigger country she had a permanent line of bites
on her body where the chiggers stopped and dug in. Usually were stopped by
elastic if you catch my meaning.
We don't have any standing water closer than a block away and mosquito
control comes by nightly. Hate to think what the skeeter population would
be like if we didn't have mosquito control. People down here were still
getting mosquito borne malaria when I was a small child. Hasn't been a case
in years, but we do get encephalitis cases annually.
She took sulphur tablets one year and got no chigger bites. Of course I
wouldn't bite her either, the kids and the dogs avoided her, and neighbor
ladies gave her odd looks when she walked by. Evidently elemental sulphur
converts to H2S in the body. Anyway, she smelled like fresh flatulate all
the time. Said she would rather be bit by chiggers as for people to think a
southern lady would pass gas in public.
George