Nothing Doing

Took a Total Day Off

It was blasted hot yesterday morning. By the time I was done taking care of the horses, I was soaked in sweat.

Since it was the first day of my vacation with no obligations, I did essentially nothing.

I did a little vacuuming, a little reading, a little take the garbage out to the road for pickup, a little munching, a little napping, and virtually nothing really worthwhile.

Later near dusk, a truck pulled into the back yard and it was my friend who works for the Mosquito Control Commission. I have an IN. Which means that he makes sure they spray over our houses in this little strip--something they don't always do.

The heliocopter flew over us three or four times sending the horses into a silly gallop. They sent streams of mosquito spray our way, hopefully killing the darn nuisances.

I am somewhat vindicated in my reporting to other people on how bad the mosquitoes are here. While we are not the only people living in the area of the Pigeon Swamp, we are apparently the most cursed of the lot. My friend said that for some reason when he does mosquito counts here he gets 30. In all the other areas of the swamp surroundings, he gets 8 -9. They have a little tube thing that collects the critters for the count and our level is the highest in the area.

Yea! Do I get a gold star? Nah, just little red bug bites.

We can't speculate as to why it is so bad here as right where I am the water is quite far away. It may be that because I am in the uplands, all the animals are in my area and the mosquitoes know where to go for food. Or, the sandpit waters may do some overflow into good breeding areas.

I do my best to keep standing water from settling on my property, but mosquitoes can breed in less than a teaspoon of water, so any drop can be a problem. We have had quite in bit of rain this season including a pretty heavy thunderstorm last night.

As far as the other bugs go, we also have some pretty aggressive deer flies and the less populous, but equally annoying variety of horse flies. I have orders of fly predators for the barn flies that breed near the barn and this year, I found out that I can still feed the horses the feedthrough fly control, Equitrol even though I use the predators. So far, the flies are not too bad in the barn area, so I hope these two approaches will keep them at bay.

I do have Bug Armor, the mesh riding rugs, for the horses when I ride as I reported before, and fly sheets for everyday wear. And, each horse has a nice strong fan blowing into his stall. All in all, aside from the heat, I guess it's about as good as it can be for the Boys.