mosquito season is worse this year, but tiktok user says she has a solution
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mosquito season is back with a vengeance in ontario and elsewhere this year, thanks to temperatures that went quickly from cold to hot – remember that heat wave in early april? – causing a lot of standing water from melted snow. add to that a few rainy days, and conditions are ripe for the biting, blood-sucking, disease-carrying critters to lay their eggs in those stagnant pools and start multiplying.
but recently, a tiktok user named finch (@afinchmerely) posted a video touting the benefits of mosquito dunks, a simple just-add-water product that stops mosquito larvae from becoming adults.
“it’s almost the end of may, i’m hanging out in my backyard, and i have not gotten a single mosquito bite,” she says happily, before showing off a “nasty bucket of water,” full of grass clippings and a small puck-like object: the mosquito dunk.
“that dunk keeps them from maturing,” she adds. “the mosquitoes come lay their eggs here, and then that is the end of their line. and i get to enjoy my back yard.”
mosquito dunks, which sometimes go by the name insect briquets, contain bacillus thuringiensis serotype israelensis, a group of bacteria that produces toxins that are effective in killing various species of mosquitoes, gnats and blackflies, while having almost no effect on other organisms.
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mosquito avoidance checklists often suggest wearing long, light-coloured clothes (dark colours are more attractive to the bugs) and/or tight-fitting clothing, as well as staying away from their hangouts during early-morning and earl-evening hours, when they are most active.
another tip is to clear away any standing water. in fact, a top-10 list provided by environmental health science firm gdg environment includes eight variations of that, including fixing leaky garden hoses, covering rain barrels and turning over wheelbarrows and boats.
but finch suggests you keep at least a little standing water around. just make sure you put a dunk in it.
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