Scores Of Skeeters On The Way, After Recent Wet Weather
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- All the wet weather and flooding is likely to give us a bumper crop of particularly nasty mosquitoes.
Those who watch such things say, right now, they're seeing moderate numbers of Q/X or House Mosquitoes.
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But we haven't seen anything yet, says Dave Zazra of the North Shore Mosquito Abatement District.
"Within probably 14 to 21 days, we'll see a lot of flood-water mosquitoes emerging," he tells Newsradio 780's Mike Krauser.
These mosquitoes aren't carriers of West Nile virus, but they are very unpleasant, he warns.
"They're just very aggressive day-biters. When you're bit by one of these mosquitoes you tend to know it," he says.
"What the flood-water mosquito does is lays its eggs above flood stage in damp soil and over winters they can last for years," Zazra explains.
Rising water, he says, starts the hatching process.
Mosquitoes that carry West Nile, he says, will show up at the end of June.
To help stem the tide of mosquitoes, get rid of standing water. Even a bottle cap of water can be too much.
"You can get potentially thousands of mosquitoes to breed in that amount of water," Zazra says.
In Downers Grove Friday night, the man from the company known as the "Mosquito Squad" was hard at work, spraying gallons of EPA-approved mosquito killer over a worried homeowner's lawn and trees. The eggs are all over the landscape, waiting for warm weather to hatch and then.
"We've got a lot of heat coming so floodwater mosquitoes are going to be on rise," company vice president Rick Norwood told CBS 2's Mike Parker.
