Bug Control

The mosquitos are really bad this year. It's kind of surprising, considering the long cold spring, but they eat me alive every time I leave the house after, oh, say six p.m. The fourth of July we were all outside all evening watching the fireworks (my neighbors put on a great show) and completely miserable. I bought the highest level DEET mosquito repellant I could find, but they just don't care. 

This house has a sump-pump, and the old owners made a very fancy system in which the water is pumped into a little fountain and then splashed into a tiny stream and runs down the front yard into a large concrete pond. It's a pretty big pond. Last year when the mosquitos got bad, I decided to empty the pond but I didn't have a pump. So I did it with a two gallon bucket. After a while, noticing that the level of the water didn't seem to be changing, I decided to start counting buckets. After that point, I emptied the bucket 400 times. So I think the pond is about a thousand gallons.  My back was absolutely destroyed for three weeks, and for two days I couldn't hold anything in my hands at all. They were totally nerveless.

So I decided not to do that again. We had to come up with alternative methods of mosquito control. Feeder goldfish are only 25 cents at the pet store downtown. I bought 20, and that's a picture of them up there, for those of you who were wondering what the little orange blobs were. If these little guys do well, I'll add another 50 or so. I'm not sure what will happen when the rains start in the fall and the sump pump begins sending thirty or forty gallons of muddy water into the pond every day, but I haven't thought that far ahead. I'm sure I'll think of something (didn't I mention something about this habit of mine a few days ago?).