Tick and insect season is now in full swing. You will notice them more often as the weather warms up.
This month's wet conditions have been ideal for mosquitoes, particularly for the extremely common Asian tiger mosquitoes. They lay eggs only in containers of water and bite strictly in the daytime.
Mosquito eggs hatch in as little as a few days and out of the eggs come larvae. They wriggle around as they feed in the water and so they are called wrigglers. Then they turn into pupae that appear to tumble around in the water. Their other name is tumblers.
Finally the tumblers morph into adults and fly away. That is when mosquitoes get their first taste of blood.
It takes as little as seven to 10 days for mosquitoes to go from egg to adult. This means they will be breeding in your bird bath by the hundreds and thousands unless you dump the old water out and refill it at least once a week.
The average yard has many other choice habitats for breeding mosquitoes. These may include water holding environments found in old car tires, buckets, tarps, clogged gutters and pots and planters with built-in trays to catch drainage water.
Holes and cavities in tree trunks also attract egg-laying mosquitoes. To discourage them, you can fill the holes with sand or dirt.
Ticks prefer weather that is not too dry or wet. Right now the new tick larvae hatched from eggs last fall are developing and they need some blood to continue growing.
These relatives of spiders and chiggers can carry some terrible diseases caused by viruses, bacteria and protozoa. Fortunately ticks do not fly or drop down out of trees onto people and pets.
Ticks have eight legs and they crawl very well. They can travel over a foot in a minute whether it is across the ground or on your body.
In search of food, ticks will crawl long distances. Sixty feet or more is possible.
Their main activity at this time of year is questing. Ticks move upward to the tips of grassy stems and edges of leaves and sit there with front legs fully extended hoping to latch onto a warm-blooded creature.
Questing ticks know when a meal is coming their way. They sense heat, vibrations, movement and carbon dioxide.
If your lawn is infested with ticks, you could use granular lawn insect control products. One application per year is usually enough.
When traveling through woods, fields and wild areas, it is helpful to wear long pants and tuck the cuffs into your socks. For more complete tick protection, you can spray the clothing on your lower limbs with an insect repellent containing 40 percent DEET.
Controlling ticks on dogs once required physically checking them for ticks and making them wear insecticide collars. Today, eliminating ticks is a matter of giving dogs a modern tick control product once every 30 to 90 days.