The Most Unusual Places We’ve Found Mosquitoes

Once we have treated a customer 3 times, and so long as they stay on the 3-week cycle for service, we guarantee a 95% reduction in mosquitoes. That number is variable – when the mosquito pressure is super high that 5% will be higher too. But if a customer calls with issues and a lot of mosquitoes we will go back to treat again and more importantly, have a good hunt to see why there is an issue.

Some very common reasons include:

• New mulch: Mulch carries millions of mosquito eggs, and once we lay it and add water the results are a huge jump in mosquitoes. The same holds true for new soil or new sod. It doesn’t have to be your yard either – a neighbor can add new mulch and create issues for everyone around them.
• Overwatering: Particularly if your yard is uneven, the resulting standing water will produce a lot of issues.
• Blocked gutters and downspouts: The decomposing leaves and sludge will lead to dirty stagnant water and hence mosquitoes.
• Cracked septic tank lids: This is our nemesis as a septic tank can produce an incredible mosquito population. Check out our videos on Facebook or Google to see what we mean.
• Biting midges: So many times, we go out and find that the insect the customer thinks is a mosquito and turns out is something else entirely. Biting midges are out all day. They live in the grass and tend to bite your lower limbs more. Mosquitoes are out at dawn and dusk and bite the most vascular areas. We can treat for midges, but we have to treat the grass and we don’t do that when we treat for mosquitoes.

Over the years we have had difficult properties – some we expected, like the property that backed up to a stagnant lake, or the property surrounded on 3 sides by culverts. But other properties have been real head-scratchers initially. Here are some of the oddest places we have found to cause mosquito issues, and that we now always look for:

1. Tufted outdoor chair cushions: Who knew that those pulled areas around each button really mimic a cup and hold water after it rains? One teaspoon of water results in 300 mosquitoes every few days. If half those eggs are female a week later 150 mosquitoes are laying 300 eggs every few days. A week after that is 22,500 mosquitoes laid 300 eggs. You can see why such a small thing becomes such a big issue.
2. Frisbees: We had a customer whose dog loved frisbees. His owner couldn’t understand where they all went, so he kept buying more. We eventually located a stash of frisbees under the deck. Most of them were laying upside down so that water was collected inside them. That’s a lot of standing water right under the area where the owner sat every evening.
3. Fence posts without caps: This one took a long time. Our lead technician, Kyle, likes to sit in the grass and wait when he visits a problem property. We get calls from worried customers telling us there might be something wrong with our technician. What he is doing is emitting CO2 plumes as he breathes and waiting to see what the insect is and where they might be coming from. The fence post with its missing cap took this sort of figuring out. It turns out that the fence post in question was full of water. It is one of those “unseen” locations that are easy to miss.
4. Tree stumps: These guys are always full of crevices and cracks. Trees, if chainsawed down, are never cut flat and the result is more standing water than you want.
5. Outdoor play kitchens/houses: It is amazing just how much water a kid’s toy can hold. A few years ago, we went on Good Morning Houston and demonstrated this very thing with a plastic boat. The worst offender is the outdoor kitchen, which not only has holes in the plastic but crevices and cracks and a sink where water can hold. Even if we dump that out, the plastic frame is often full of water. We had one customer who did the right thing and moved his daughter’s kitchen into his garage. But he called us complaining of getting bitten while working on his car. He was unable to empty the frame of water and simply moved the water to a shaded space and this compounded the issue. We recommend drilling holes in the base of these toys, as well as your trash cans and anything else in your yard that can fill up after rain (or sprinklers).

The main lesson here is that mosquitoes are incredibly resourceful, and it is often the unobvious articles in your yard that can cause the biggest issues. If you would rather spend your free time enjoying your yard rather than playing “hunt the mosquito” give us a call at 281-815-0228 and we can do it for you.