Mosquitos in the Car

I was on my way to work last Friday and noticed some fluttering in the car. A mosquito: oh crap.

We would be carpooling for about 40 minutes, and that wasn't going to work out very well (for me),  so I focused in and swatted it dead, only to notice another two more zoning in on my arm. Slip*Slap*Gone.

We are Dragonfly Central, chiefly due to the abandoned pool next door that has just enough rainwater to be the Zamora Mosquito Capital of the World. We had these little black gnatty things early in the summer but once the temps got high enough, they disappeared. There were mosquitos early in the summer, of course, but nothing like now.

We go to bed wearing John's Skin So Soft on our upper bodies. Like camping!

The Yolo County Mosquito Abatement team come with their little test tubes and monitor it, and they use mosquito fish who leave constant water kisses as they gobble up the surface mosquitos. But mosquitos still pour out of there and they are a delicacy of dragonflies, which I didn't realize until the other night.

Sam typically uses a spot around the side of the house for her doings, and it was dusk as we rounded the bend.  The air was full of dragonflies. It's about 300 sq feet between the house and the fence, and there were hundreds of them in a feeding frenzy. The air was moving with quick jerks in all directions, high in the air and along the ground, too.

Sam and I stood and watched for a minute, and I let her decide what she wanted to do. She looked at me and cocked her ears and turned towards the front yard, and that was that. What a sensible dog.


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On Sunday the Sheriff's Department talked to us about the ground squirrel problem. They are not the furry sweet tree squirrels people write books about; they are a menace for crops and property, and they have taken up residence on the land. Burrows are everywhere. Being surrounded by farmland on all sides, the property is an ideal spot for them to nest.

Typical eradication treatments are traps with bait or bait down the holes, but we have the diggingest dog you've ever seen, and so we had to talk about maybe shooting them. The Sheriff said that's totally alright, and most of our neighbors do it that way. Welcome to Rural America.


That was music to the Hubs' ears, sharp-shooter that he is. Last evening I spied him on patrol around dusk, swatting mosquitos and walking the perimeter around the chicken coop. Didn't I mention there is a chicken coop? For a couple more weeks, there is ...


I'd rather them just pack up and leave, maybe flood their burrows and scare them off before the garage and gardens go in.  But we hear how persistent they are. And anyway, after our best tomatoes were snatched right off the vine within the first 24 hours here, they kind of started it. Critters, your lease is up.