Mosquito madness

The bad news:  Anyone with a pulse in Galveston County realizes that we are now into the worst mosquito outbreak that we've had in months.

Here's how bad it is right now:
We keep a dedicated can of repellant at the door.  The procedure is to first crack the door open about three inches.  Grab can, stick arm outside, spray liberally, then slam door shut again and wait inside for about 30 more seconds.  Then open door, exit, and run like hell to wherever it is you need to go (your car, shed, dog kennel, trash cans, etc), taking the repellant can with you.  Repeat door spray-down procedure before re-entering your house, or else you will drag two dozen mosquitoes in with you each time you enter. 

Note that if you have a really nice door, you might want to be careful about the application of spray because the chemicals in some sprays might damage a door's finish.

The good news:  Galveston County Mosquito Control is aware of the severity of the problem.

Homepage screengrab from this morning, courtesy of
http://www.co.galveston.tx.us/mosquito_control/index.htm

Here's a cartoon screengrab of one of their
maniacal little animated bloodsuckers,
just to enhance this blog post mood.

The other good news is that Mosquito Control has a pretty sophisticated website and is very good about keeping folks up-to-date on their activities.  Given the spray distribution that I see on their current set of maps, I bet they will be spraying east League City (i.e., our area) within the next couple of days. 

The other bad news:  Centerpointe has more than one issue with mosquitoes right now.  The primary issue is that a large hatch-out did occur due to recent rain and tides.  But an aggravating factor is that we are currently surrounded by un-mowed weed fields.  As I noted in a post about four months ago, mosquitoes do not breed in high grass, but various references on the internet suggest that high grass allows them to attain good protective cover.  High grass provides them with a home that encourages them to congregate in an area, especially allowing them to take shelter during the heat of the day.  If anyone has information to the contrary on this point, please email me, but that's the understanding that I have.

Here's a screengrab from that previous post.

Current cases in point for us:

South of Centerpointe Section 9, next to the new Shell gas station that's being built.  Grass, grass, and more grass.

Adjacent east of Centerpointe.  Not as high as the area to our south, but getting there.

Also adjacent east of Centerpointe.

Note that, for two of those shots above, I included the sales signs so that you can call those sellers' realtors and encourage them to ask their clients to cut the grass on their properties.  I didn't get out and measure it, but we have a 12-inch weed ordinance in this city, and it looks like these properties are bumping up against that.  For sure the tract of land south of Section 9, and these eastern tracts are getting up there, too. 

References:
http://leaguecity.com/index.aspx?NID=254
http://library.municode.com/index.aspx?clientId=10947&stateId=43&stateName=Texas 

If I manage to get a contact phone number for the south property owner, I'll follow up with a comment here.  And I'll also forward this post link to the POA for their consideration.  As always, thanks for reading.