Mosquito control, How does it work? No, Really, How?
Ah, summer, that time of year where you make your schedule around those perfect moments you want to spend outside.
I can see it now, a comfortable chair, a little shade, a gentle breeze, kids playing in the grass and OH NOOOOO! PUT THAT HOSE DOWN! YOU CAN’T WASH MOMMY’S CAR!…BECAUSE THE WINDOWS ARE OPEN! YOU ALREADY DID?! (deep breath, you can’t kill them, the neighbors are watching) in a super calm voice say “it’s ok honey, please get your sister, she has dirt in her mouth. Oh I just noticed, (keep voice super leveled) did you leave the gate open? Where is the dog?…. A calmness settles over you, you get back to your chair, you sip some fresh iced tea and gaze out over your comfortable domain, until WHAMMM! You smack yourself in the ear as the mosquito who just bit you gently floats away towards your children.
Sounds familiar? Does it? Yeesh, so sorry. Well anyway, the last part of that story is what we will be addressing, (although you may want to invest in an automatic gate closer.)
To understand mosquito control you must first understand the mosquito. A few notable facts about the mosquito: they are not strong, vigorous insects. They rely on their numbers to stay in business. They can use any sugar as food but only a blood meal (that’s you) allows them to create eggs. Only the much smaller female mosquito bites -I would make a joke here but the female also does ALL the work so I would then have to make another joke. Let’s just agree that all females of every species are much better than the males. I would be remiss (and really foolish) if I did not take this opportunity to thank my wife for giving my children life and doing basically everything else while I sit around pretending to do important things, like fix the gate.
Where were we? Right. So the female mosquito will get some blood (from you) and then go lay A BOAT LOAD of little eggs. They can lay these anywhere, but they prefer moist areas. A mosquito can lay 50 eggs in a bottle cap of water. That little puddle at the bottom of your garbage can that has kinda been there since you cleaned the can out erev pesach? Yeah, that’s basically back Lawrence for a mosquito. These eggs can sit all year round, even through the winter until the moisture levels are just right, either because the humidity in the air reached a certain point or when you told your kids to stop putting cups full of liquid in the garbage bag they didn’t listen and as you danced your garbage bag outside pretending the “juice” was not pouring on your leg and into your shoes you could not realize that you were about to trigger the miracle of life, in your garbage can for 286 little mosquito larva, yes,life is so beautiful.
Some more fun facts, mosquitoes do not like to fly far, they kind of take these really long hops. They do not like the sun, they prefer shade or even better the back of your ankle, it’s out of the sun and has an open buffet. Mosquitoes are attracted to people because we give off a smell, yes even you, ok ok I’m just kidding, mosquitoes are attracted to people because MEN give off a smell. While it’s true there are smells that they don’t like, at some point if they are hungry enough and it’s not too far they will travel across the barrier of bad smell (Also possible from a man) to find a blood meal (that’s still you).
Mosquito eggs hatch into these little worms called larva and they swim around, going to the top of the water taking a sip of air, then wiggling down to the bottom, they do this ALL DAY long…it’s their own version of a shmorg, just one more piece of sesame chicken, you know the kugel just came out and that with the sauce from just one more piece of chicken…Anywho, over the course of days they change, until one day they rise to the surface and pop out wings and spring into the air….not a horror movie, real life. They then go hopping and flying around, hanging out on the underside of leaves, the bottom of that fancy new light fixture you got over your door, under your gutters, under your deck, under your car. You get the picture.
Now you may be wondering about the male mosquito, what does he do? Don’t worry, every female mosquito mother is wondering the same thing.
It is at this point you have to ask yourself a few serious questions and be honest with yourself about the answers. So what does this all mean? How does mosquito control work? And most importantly, how can you make your neighbor more attractive to mosquitoes than you…Look at them, sitting there silently judging your parenting…just because when you gave them a rid the passenger seat of your car happened to be soaking wet, common, big deal, no one was gonna notice if their ….place where they sit, was wet, weddings are known to have dim lighting, am I right?
So mosquito control, let’s dive right in. There are three basic things we at mosquito shield are trying to accomplish, well four if you count making sure the gate is closed. 1) We want to kill as many adults as possible immediately. 2) We want to make sure that the mosquito larva do not turn into adult mosquitoes, as you have read most of them would grow up in single parent households because the father… you know what, I don’t want to judge. 3) We want to make it so that new mosquitoes don’t start looking at your property and wonder how much the house is going for and is it rude to knock if there is no realtor sign (yes it is). 4) We want to close the freaking gate, although at this point I must tell you it is very very broken.
So how can you make it that your home doesn’t have any mosquitoes? You can’t. Waaaat I just read this whole thing and missed what my sister in law(who just came over for a minute) was saying, to read all this and…Ok let’s be honest, you were glad for the distraction. My point is that nothing is perfect when it comes to outside. But it can be great, amazing and perfect for some.
The idea works like this. From an egg until that egg becomes a biting mosquito is around 2 weeks, give or take 2 days. When we come to treat your property, we are breaking the cycle by killing most if not all adult mosquitoes right away. Whether using a natural or synthetic spray our techs are trained to get the product in places that mosquitoes would be comfortable in, we have to think like a mosquito, if I were a mosquito and (there are no men around to make smells) where would I be?
That leaves the larva, the unhatched eggs and new wandering mosquitoes looking for a home. We treat the areas that have or will have standing water, even a drop, with a special product that kills the larva and inhibits the eggs from even hatching or if it does it won’t allow the larva to become an adult…They are stuck as a worm in a puddle of “juice” inyour garbage can (sweet revenge.) We then treat the rest of the property with a product that doesn’t smell great to mosquitoes and is toxic to them.
So the ones that try to visit will be put off by the bad odor and then if hunger overcomes them they may try to sneak across the lawn but every time they land on your grass they are hopping to their doom as the grass and shrubs are coated in product.
Now it’s at this point I must mention that as I said at the beginning of this article 4 hours ago when your sister in law came over for just a minute, mosquitoes are not strong, so even a drop of the right product in the right place at the right time will end them faster than the last 100 roll pack of toilet paper disappears from Costco. That combined with the intelligent placement of the larva inhibitor and the experience of our techs gets you great results right away that just keep getting better over the summer.
All joking aside for just a moment. What separates us from other mosquito companies (aside from our brevity and seriousness) is that we understand that every house is different and that our customers chose us to be their heroesfor the summer and we do not want to let them down, ever.
Our customer service CANNOT be beat. If you have an issue between scheduled visits we come down free of charge as many times as is necessary to get you that “Ahhh” feeling (that’s the good ahh sound, not the yelling at your kids who once again left the fridge in the basement open and now everything is…) We understand mosquitoes, we study them, we grow them in our own lab (yes this is true, we test all of our products to make sure they work as advertised, I would tell you the story about the containment unit failing but I want to keep this article as short as possible.)
In short, you having a comfortable summer in your yard is a mission we work towards all year long.
We hope this article was informative and humorous, if you did not find it humorous and you read all the way to here, I….Well I don’t really know what to say except for….why? We hope you call us and try some of that amazing customer service you read so much about and we hope that no matter what, you and your family stay healthy and whole.
Call us, we won’t let you down. 516-218-8800
Mosquito Shield of Long island is owned and operated by Leon Lantman and Ohavia Feldman. Our customer service has become legendary due to the amazing dedication to our customers by our office team led by the office manager, Rivka Leyton.
Written By Ohavia Feldman
