Just give me the DEETs

Screw vitamin B, coconut oil, rosemary and lemongrass. I live in an area which has seen near record rain this spring. The upside is that the roses look great, the downside is the mosquitoes are bigger than the rose bushes. In fact, I saw one in my bathroom and it was the size of a Buick. My children and I are mosquito magnets. It’s an unrequited love. Recently I found out that, like a virus, once a mosquito jabs you, you significantly reduce your body’s reaction of that particular mosquito species. Bad news is — there are over 3,000 types of mosquito species.

When my children were young, they had what I considered an allergic reaction to mosquito bites. One time my younger son was bit on the face and on the ear and wound up looking like the Hunchback and Howdy Doody’s love child. The boy looked grotesquely deformed. He was a swollen, miserable mess. I made multiple trips to the drug store to try to find magic potions to alleviate his discomfort. You would think in this day and age something like that would exist, but mosquitoes apparently have us by the bloody balls. Children’s ibuprofen and “maximum strength” topical aids turned out to be a colossal waste of money. He went to school with my sincerest apologies and explanations. You can’t send that kind of physical train wreck to school without an explanation.

According to WebMD, genetics plays a large role in the 85% of people who are preferred by mosquitoes. Who knew?!? Those who exhale more carbon dioxide are at increased risk of being the current special on the mosquito’s menu.

My mosquito aura was likely passed down to my kids. I remember growing up, I would come home with what looked like measles after the little fuckers got to me. As an adult, I’m still their favorite entree, with each bite looking as if I am growing a boob on random parts of my body. I’m not really sure if PETA has an official stance on mosquitoes and I don’t care,  my opinion is that the best mosquito is a dead mosquito. I have also learned recently that mosquitoes can carry up to 68 viruses. Assholes!

But this is not just a rant about my hatred for the blood sucking a-hole insects, it goes deeper than that. I blame the government. I blame the EPA.

While the EPA gladly acknowledges the risk of mosquitoes and the safety of DEET, they have made it so cost prohibitive for counties to spray for mosquitoes that many, if not most counties in America have stopped spraying for mosquitoes altogether. The EPA claims it doesn’t regulate DEET or any other pesticides deemed to be safe, but they do regulate when and where you can spray it. The problem is, since the guidelines are so stringent, if a molecule of pesticide from a spraying truck is found in the atmosphere of an EPA “off limits’ area, they are well within their right to issue outrageous fines and possible jail time for the county insect control administrators. It’s a risk most that most counties cannot afford nor can they guarantee that a molecule of pesticide will not travel to a leaf .00001 inches within a “safe zone.”

While mosquito control spraying uses other forms of pesticide and not specifically DEET, they have little to no evidence of the health effects on humans in the amount that’s being sprayed and for the seasonal duration has any dire consequences. While I like rivers and streams as much as the next guy, I hate mosquitoes so much, I’m gonna use a quote from Dennis Leary as an analogy. His quote was about smoking but if you substitute smoking for “pesticides,” well, you get the idea…

“Smoking Pesticides take ten years off your life. Well it’s the ten worst years, isn’t it folks? It’s the ones at the end! It’s the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, adult diaper fucking years. You can have those years! We don’t want ‘em, alright?”