Quote:
Originally Posted by mensplace
Growing up in the south I always heard folks say they were hopeful of a cold winter to kill off so many of the mosquitoes. Then, when I lived for a while in Wisconsin we had the coldest winter on record. Seems I distinctly remembered swarms of the largest mosquitos I had ever seen.
When living in the Carolina low country I remember trucks rolling through the neighborhood spraying HUGE clouds of DDT to kill the mosquitoes and stop the malaria. Later, planes were used to try to leave poisons on the tops of standing water. Today's worst mosquitoes don't require the standing water to reproduce.
Later, in Atlanta, they used C5A transports at rooftop level to cover the Atlanta are with tiny red pellets to kill the fire ants. That never worked either. Now, the fire ants have hundreds of miles of networks that run beneath developments and fields.
Poison and more poisons and the insects merely evolve. I have repeatedly sprayed the carpet with four insect bombs at a time for the black widows with very little impact. I don't lift a rock without being very careful.
Seems the insects are going to win.
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Terrible year for the mosquitos even up here in the north. We got eaten alive camping last weekend. We have the ocasional west nile virus up here. I despise the DEET too, but some years there's just no way around it. Insects tend to rise and fall in plague numbers and I'm sure we will see that with the invasives as well.
To be honest, it's a good thing that some forms of life are so resilient because it ensures the planet with live on, with our mess, after we are all gone.
I wouldn't worry much about widows underground, by the by; tough place to spin a web to catch the critters that feast on our crops.