Still Bugged

I'm bugged about a lot of things. My sagging skin. My thinning hair. My inability to pedal the exercycle for 30 minutes. The new month's bills that come in just as I've paid the old ones. My neighbors' lawn mowers or lawn services making a lot of noise in the early morning when I seek quiet on my porch.

Right now I'm really bugged about bugs.

Back in 2018 I wrote a post about bugs. It started, "If there is one thing I dislike more in summer than heat, humidity, weeds and deer, it is insects."

That hasn't changed. That post talks about all the insects, the importance of them in the cycle of life and how we must dress to deal with them.

What I didn't discuss was DEET. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 

DEET (chemical name, N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) is the active ingredient in many repellent products. It is widely used to repel biting pests such as mosquitoes and ticks. Every year, an estimated one-third of the U.S. population use DEET to protect them from mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile Virus, the Zika virus or malaria and tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Products containing DEET currently are available to the public in a variety of liquids, lotions, sprays, and impregnated materials (e.g., towelettes, roll on). Formulations registered for direct application to human skin contain from 5 to 99% DEET. Except for a few veterinary uses, DEET is registered for use by consumers, and it is not used on food.

Recent haiku: 

Here I sit,

Home from my birding.

Smelling of DEET.

At this time of year, besides the heat and humidity, it is more difficult for me to find any interesting birds, aside from the types of birds I'm likely to find in my backyard all year. In August the foliage is denser than in spring, the migrant birds less brightly colored and they are not singing territorial or nesting songs. When I go into the field in the days after one of the many global-warming-enhanced torrential downpours, I must look up in the treetops to see if anything is flying around.

That exposes the area of my neck under my chin to hungry flies, gnats and mosquitoes. And they've been biting.

So now I spray DEET on the backs of my hands and rub the smelly liquid on my neck, face and ears. It is very effective. The bugs don't bite. But they don't go away either, they hover and try to find a vulnerable area, like the deer that found a weakness in my fencing and took a few bites out of one of my sedum plants a few weeks ago.

The DEET smell stays with me when I drive home and I must wash it off, unless I plan on going out again to bird, so I add more.

98% DEET. I don't mess around when it comes to protection.
(Margo D. Beller)

The areas by standing water, of which there is a lot on both sides of the paths I walk after a major rain, are mosquito breeding grounds. They are bad, and so are other areas in the woods. Out in the sun, on a paved sidewalk, they are not so bad. But then I am in the sun, and on a humid day the combination is deadly.

DEET is found in a number of spray and liquid products under a variety of names including Off! and Repel, exactly why you would want to buy a chemical like this.

Says the Cleveland Clinic: 

Some people experience rashes or irritated skin after using DEET. It can also irritate your eyes if sprayed too close to your peepers.

More alarming, there have been rare reports of seizures associated with DEET. But according to the National Pesticide Information Center, most of those cases followed people drinking products with DEET or otherwise using them in ways that don’t follow recommended guidelines.

But overall, reactions are few and far between given the hundreds of millions of users.

I would not be stupid enough to drink DEET but I do know about the eye irritation.

At least this year I have not had an infestation of fungal gnats, carpenter ants or drain flies anywhere in the house or on the enclosed porch, at least not yet.

When I see people blithely walking or running through a known mosquito area while wearing shorts, open shoes and nothing on their arms, while I have on a shirt or jacket with the collar up, my hat pulled down, my light gloves on and my stink of DEET, I think, "Better you than me." But they keep moving while I stand and scan, a perfect target.

Bugged

If there is one thing I dislike more in summer than heat, humidity, weeds and deer, it is insects.

The huge amount of rain that fell in August spawned a bumper crop of mosquitoes that, along with the biting flies, hornets, gnats and no-see-ums, make walking difficult, even without heat and humidity. I walk in the bedewed grass in the morning and I come to the porch with bare ankles burning from bites. I walk along my favorite path and where there is standing water a cloud of mosquitoes follows, biting my arms despite flailing them around, or swarming around my knees, smelling the blood from veins near the surface.

State bird of New Jersey (a free picture courtesy of Pixabay)

The estimated ratio of insects to humans is 200 million to one, say Iowa State University entomologists. In the United States, the number of described species is approximately 91,000, according to the Smithsonian Institution. One site that catalogs the bugs found in New Jersey says there are 584. They include the pretty butterflies, the not-so-pretty cockroaches, beetles, spiders, the aphids that will suck the life out of your plants, the ladybugs that will eat the aphids, the almost prehistoric-looking praying mantis and the ticks that are the bane of hikers who go off-road or travel through long grass and rough terrain. The cicadas call during the hot days, the katydids during hot nights and the crickets at all times.

There are also the many types of wasps, hornets, yellow-jackets and bees plus the midges known as no-see-ums, sandflies and chiggers. Travelers to the shore must contend with biting green-headed flies, whose numbers can force birders to look from inside their cars, windows rolled up.

When it comes to mosquitos we are told to remove all standing water. In my case that means frequent changing of the water in the dish I keep out for the birds, the ant moat that keeps insects from covering (and drowning in) the hummingbird feeder and emptying out the excess water from saucers underneath potted plants. But the other bugs I can't see or hear are worse. I push aside the large leaves of the potted canna to water the soil and something bites my arms. I walk in the grass to pick up brush and something bites my ankles. I cut back the overgrowth of the multiflora rose or a vine and something bites my elbow. 

Yes, I know, bugs are part of the circle of life. They are food for birds. While some have been cutting chunks out of the leaves of my plants and shrubs, others have been eating the offenders. Many pollinate the flowers. A bite once in a while I can tolerate, but the increase in the number of bites I am finding on me (some of which don't start getting very itchy until hours after the fact) is, with the intense heat, forcing me indoors more than I'd like, and that has me bugged. 

MH rarely wears short-sleeved shirts in summer. He usually wears long sleeves to protect his arms, particularly when he mows the lawn and disturbs the many insects in the grass that don't appreciate the intrusion. Many of these insects also hide in my garden plants, such as the hornets I discovered using my pot of perennial geranium for their nest last year when I attempted to water it. 

So when the next cool-down comes and it is time to start cutting back the garden - very soon, I hope - I will have to do more to protect myself, too.