Ever hear of a Gallinipper?

[undergroundpanther]

http://news.ufl.edu/2013/03/04/big-skeeter/

The mosquitoes keep me inside on nice summer evenings because they love me,and I HATE them,now gollinippers, up this year?ugh.I hate pests,that bite get in your food and make things miserable..

I hope they never get THIS bad..(graphic horror cheeze...)

[pscot]

1. Ah. June in Minnesota.

[Warpy]

2. That was one of the pleasantest surprises of the desert, NO BUGS

Oh, there are scorpions and a couple of nasty variety of spider and huge desert cucarachas, but nothing that whines in your ear at 2 AM and chows down on you repeatedly, presenting you with large, itchy blotches and exposing you to godawful diseases.

[marybourg]

3. It used to be one of the lines in

"You know you live in Arizona" when your kid asks; "Mom, what's a *mosquito*?" But in the past few years, we've been seeing them. And now they're carrying West Nile virus. Probably malaria next.

[Warpy]

4. Thank all those upper middle class folks with their water features.

The only koi ponds I've seen here have been indoor affairs in some of the swankier Chinese restaurants. Swimming pools are a rarity so we didn't have all those foreclosed McMansions with pools full of stagnant water breeding skeeters.

You can still find them down by the Rio Grande and we have cases of West Nile and Eastern Equine encephalitis in well to do people who have river views and irrigation rights. Those of us on the poor side of town never see them.

[marybourg]

5. Don't have many home pools here, nor many foreclosures

but do live near a dry river bed which is fed by acequias (they call them, mundanely, ditches here) and they do breed there after a rain.