Quit supporting our local bloodsuckers; do your part to limit mosquitoes

I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend and were able to spend some part of it outdoors in downtown Culpeper.

I also hope you were able to avoid the local mosquitoes that seem to be living it up in our area this year. Plenty of spring and summer rain have provided ample breeding grounds, and I, for one, have provided plenty of blood. I’m probably scratching while you read this.

I’ve been so angry about the pest problem that I’ve had serious conversations about such drastic measures as:

- raising a few guinea fowl in the back yard to keep the numbers down. (I’ve been warned they’re not as easy, or quiet, as they look.)

- building a bat house to attract the nocturnal munchers over for a snack.

- demanding the town drive aerosol trucks through the streets, blasting us all with enough poison to make the mosquitoes the least of our worries.

I was so desperate I even turned to the Internet, where I discovered the Virginia Mosquito Control Association (VMCA). They’re a nonprofit/scientific educational foundation that seems to be most active in the Hampton Roads area, but does testing around the region. If you’re interested, and have a passion for mosquito control, you can become an associate member for $5 a year — with which you’ll receive their quarterly newsletter, “Skeeter.”

I should probably join just to pay them back for the helpful information they were able to give me regarding our local problem. According to Mid-Atlantic representative Kirby Foley, “ Complete and proper mosquito control will require people that understand the mosquito life cycle, Source Reduction, Surveillance, Larviciding, and Adulticiding.”

That’s not me, so I took Mr. Foley’s advice and got in touch with David N. Gaines, Ph.D., state public health entomologist for the Virginia Department of Health Office of Epidemiology.

According to Dr. Gaines, chasing sprayer trucks around our streets each evening isn’t going to do us much good. Unfortunately, we’re most likely dealing with Asian tiger mosquitoes (recognizable by their black-and-white-striped legs) which spend too much time waiting around in the shrubbery for dinner to be caught flying in poison aerosol spray.

While they’ve only been established in Virginia since 1992, the Asian tiger mosquitoes are earning quite a reputation as party poopers. Across Virginia, people have reported they can’t use their backyards during the summer because of the bloodsuckers.

So if we can’t bug bomb them into oblivion, what can we do about these mosquitoes? According to Gaines, our only hope is to eliminate as much of their natural breeding area as possible. And the best way to do that is by educating your friends and neighbors about what those breeding containers might be.

Dr. Gaines listed container habitats including: buckets, plastic cups, trash can lids or trash cans, boats, ceramic or plastic potted plant trays, ornamental (plastic-lined) ponds, old tires, bird baths, wading pools, rain barrels, plastic toys, glass bottles, clogged roof gutters and black corrugated downspout extension pipes, among others.

Because many of us live on the kind of shady property the mosquitoes prefer, all it takes is a tablespoon of standing water in an artificial container to hatch the next generation. Eradication is an elusive goal, but it’s important that we all take steps to eliminate as much of this standing water as possible. And it’s probably not a bad idea for local neighborhood associations to discuss how their groups can act to combat the problem.

Please do your part to reclaim the rest of our summer evenings from this menace.

Clements’ column runs every Monday on the editorial page.