Spring has sprung, and the copious rains we received this past winter and early spring are showing themselves in the lush growth of grass, trees, shrubs and (dramatic pause) mosquitoes. I don’t know about your yard/garden/place, but I have to either slather myself with mosquito repellent or wear some netting before stepping outside, especially early […]
Mosquitoes
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Gardening in the Gloom
If you’re a gardener, you’re probably wondering what in the ever-living gahhh is going on with the weather this year. First, we had unending rain, then the rain stopped. Sort of. Then it came back. Then it went away. But wait! The overcast skies moved in after that. Lots and lots of overcast skies or […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
HumBug: Friends and Enemies
This week I started to write about spiders and ended up buying a book on mosquitoes. In the recently published book The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, author Timothy Winegard calculates nearly half the people who ever lived died of mosquito bites. To put things into a modern perspective, mosquitoes kill on average […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Throwback Crickets and Darkling Beetles
Bugs from long ago About 30 years ago, I was riding my mountain bike in the desert north of Reno when I saw a large, shiny insect climbing up one of the sage bushes. I stopped, emptied the little container I kept full of bike tools into my pockets and collected it. By that time, […]
Posted inNews
HumBug: Killer Wrigglers
Last night I mercilessly killed a couple hundred of the deadliest animals on the planet, maybe averted a plague and fed the hungry. I hardly worked up a sweat. Statistically, more human deaths (not to mention misery) are caused annually by mosquito borne diseases than those carried by any other critter. At last count they […]