Imprison Mosquitos?

My last post on mosquito control was intended as a tongue in cheek comment not only on mosquitoes, but on programs that obviously need to be carried out by government. The idea of relying on individuals to spray their own property is (I thought) patently ludicrous.

Had I attended last Monday's county commissioners meeting, I would have learned that one commissioner insisted the county's spraying program confine itself to public rights of way.

You can't control mosquitoes that way.

Normally, mosquitoes confine themselves to an area within one to two miles of the place they hatched. Some are more peripatetic, and have been found seventy-fives miles from where they hatched.

Unless the commissioner in question knows of some way to confine mosquitoes to the lot on which they hatched, the policy she proposes will be totally ineffective for mosquito control.

Why worry? Aren't mosquitoes just a nuisance? Well, no. They transmit diseases that can be fatal to man and beast. West Nile virus and equine encephalitis, for example.

My father suffered from malaria. He didn't contract it in the jungles of New Guinea where he served during WWII - he contracted it as a child in Holmes County, Mississippi.

Malaria disappeared from the US in the 1940's as a result of a number of measures, including aggressive use of DDT. We know better now about other adverse consequences of DDT.

Maybe someone will develop mosquito prisons.