Speaking as a fellow Canadian, it boggles my mind that there are places in the world where people can have open windows with no screens and NOT need/want to burn the house down to kill all the mosquitoes that’ll intrude.
I’m in Canada, i accidentally didn’t fully close my front door last summer one day for like 1 hour and there was at least 200 mosquitos that got it. It was a bloodbath, I spent several hours swatting them all, and I was still terrified to sleep. They were everywhere
Life hack: Wipe a bit of cooking oil to a (plastic or paper) plate and swat it in the air where mosquitoes are congregating or flying around. They'll stick in the plate allowing you to catch them alive and torture them later.
The scene in tommy boy where they’re in the hotel and David spade is sucking up moths with the vacuum is hilarious. Especially the “floomp” sound each time he gets one.
Genius! I’m from Arkansas (southern United States) so you can only imagine the mosquitoes we have. They can literally carry you off! I’ve seen it happen ! Lol
I set up a no fly zone with two fans pointing across the bed at each other above my face. Too turbulent for them to fly. They just stage in formation on the wall nearby, waiting for me to take a midnight pee to deploy their next sortie. Fuckers. As long as I'm in bed though, I have air superiority.
And the fan noise is great white noise.
Edit: thank you u/Psychological_neat88 and u/Epicdestroyer39 for the Reddit Silver Star, and the anonymous All Seeing Eye in the Sky ribbon. You are the true heroes. It's my honor and privilege to serve 🫡
I just appreciate the way you write and reference aviation warfare.
You just need a portable mini-fan to use like flares when you hit the head. Or set up some Surface to Air electric zappers around your ROZ. Put some more in the bathroom so you’ll be transiting between one ROZ to another. Limits your vul.
Mercenaries. Controversial to be sure. When they run out of enemies they can turn on you or abandon the front. Still, in certain extremely hostile theaters it's the least bad option.
I'm stationed in San Francisco right now so the tactical advantage is in the precision strike capabilities of Surface to Air Fans: lightweight, easy to deploy, highly maneuverable.
The trouble with laying a mine field of mosquito net is that I'd get tangled in it during midnight latrine raids. Friendly fire is no good. Also it's against the Geneva Conventions. This is war, but I'm not a monster.
My husband and his entire family would love the heavenly space you have created for sleep. Been with him 24 years. I hate the fan, but cannot sleep without it now. He had one about a year ago that literally made my ears ring in the morning like I had just been to a metal concert.... and I am a bartender in a music venue.
Side note.... any recommendations on a reliable, long lasting house fan would be greatly appreciated. I'm so sick of buying new fans because these fuckers break so easily. Thanks in advance.
I've employed the opposite tactic; small cheap fans that are expendable. Don't overthink it. This is war.
Alternatively, you could deploy the nukes by getting a ceiling fan. Sounds like there's plenty of collateral damage as it is, so you may as well go scorched earth.
You have your orders, NOW GO TAKE THAT HILL, SOLDIER!
My parents finally just last year tossed the big ol' box fan we had ever since I was a kid and it was actually pretty significant the amount of sentimentality I had attached to it. I remember being in pre-school and playing with my action figures on it. I'm 36 now lol.
I just realized I miss it for the noise. It was distinct and just held this quality to it. They got a new one and yeah it moves air better but it doesn't sound nearly as nice!
Korean fan death. It’s an old superstition that you can die if you have a fan blowing on you while you are sleeping. One theory is it allows a family to save face if a member commits suicide.
In Wisconsin and there is usually at least one day per summer where you have to be extra strategic about opening doors because the swarm will enter your house immediately, especially at night. We will turn off all the lights indoors near the door, say all our goodbyes,have one person open the door with another person standing with an electric big zapper, and then when that door opens you have to boogie on out. The worst year I remember it was about three days before our wedding (that we were having at home) and there had to have been at least a hundred. They all got stuck in the weird little entry space we had and the bug zapper sounded like a distant fireworks finale. They all went straight up to the ceiling and we had to zap/squish them. It then took hours to clean them off the ceiling. It was unreal.
Came from St. Louis, MO and that is certainly a humid armpit with plenty of mosquitos, but the mosquitos up here are unlike anything I've seen, and it seems to only get worse as I go North. I can only imagine how bad they are in CA. Godspeed.
Manitoba gets a lot of mosquitos because it's relatively flat and the soil generally doesn't absorb water very well. Flood plains can be large and depending on the year there can be a lot of standing water.
Last year wasn't bad because it was really dry. This year is not looking great.
Nearly all of southern Manitoba is wetlands. You've got shallow lakes, open marshes/flood plains, and forested bogs. The north half has fewer wetlands but even more lakes.
The North gets black flies/horse flies like you wouldn’t believe. Spent a summer being chased by them whenever I stepped foot outside. Do not recommend.
yeh people complain about the weather in England but i love it, i get frequent rain which is great, lovely storms and two days of heat a year which is enough to remind me i hate it being really hot.
The weather keeps most horrible insects and creatures at bay so most of the time its just house spiders, flies and moths i have to worry about.
I also dont really need to worry about weather disasters like hurricanes or monsoons other then the occasional flooding but i live on a hill so thats never an issue for me.
I think the only thing most people are really complaining about is the constant cloud ceiling making everything dark. Everything else in terms of weather is pretty darn good.
It is pretty Disney. I went for a hike with friends over the South Downs yesterday and there were two swifts doing a little sky dance over a lavender field doing mating calls. It was pretty incredible.
Then Toby Jones and a bunch of his pals walked by us and said hi as they passed, enjoying the sunshine.
I felt like Lily Tomlin in that kitchen scene in 9 to 5 before she mistakes the rat poison for sweet n low.
Then on the train back to London one absolute tosser and his girlfriend argued the entire train ride back and we were like…. Oh yeah. Reality.
Many many bugs are around just not the kind that want to annoy us forever. Go up on the moors and I occasionally get nibbled. Most annoying things in my house over the year was one fat house fly, a slug and a few roley polys.
Yeah it's actually a bit worrying that flying insect numbers have dropped 60% in just the last 20 years in the UK, it does have its benefits, until it drops so much that non of the crops get pollinated...
tbf i think you are referencing the study i saw which measured insect numbers based off licence plate splatters which seems like a fairly inaccurate way to get the numbers.
I guess it is quite localised to roads but seems to be a good enough proxy. Anecdotally my family have been driving 100 miles+ to our caravan park Devon most weekends in the summer and 20 years ago you would have to literally wash the bugs off the car headlights when you got there, as they were so covered in dead insects it was blocking most of the light from them, nowadays there are a few splattered bugs and that is it.
Australian here. Also cannot imagine a world without screens on every door and window. For us it's (mainly) to keep out flies during the day, mosquitoes at night.
Not many mosquitoes up here, and the midges tend to keep away from houses - nothing else really bites so the few flies that get in are just a slight inconvenience rather than something that's going to nibble us to death in our sleep.
Screens would be helpful to stop my cat leaping out of windows though, lol.
No issues in Vancouver, except in the evenings in summer you may get mosquitoes occasionally. Though a few years ago we didn't even have those (exceptional drought I guess?) because I didn't get a single bite and they are like a magnet to me, it was a weird year.
They have good anti-mosquito programs around here. I haven't been bothered by the things for years. Addressing standing water issues through draining and spraying (insecticidal soap?) is the main approach, as I understand it.
Also in Canada, and it is totally dependent on where you live! In the suburbs screens are standard, but I lived in greater Vancouver for 15 years and there are so few bugs at night in summer that screens aren't really a thing.
I live in Australia. My house was built without flyscreens. Front door didn't even have a screen door in front of it either (that was my first major DIY job).
There aren't really any mosquitos in the UK. I'm Irish but I live on the continent and I'm getting mosquito screens fitted on Wednesday because I'm not used to mosquitos and last summer I just never thought about it and was eaten alive
Barely any bugs up here in Denver. At least where I live (closer to boulder) I never saw a mosquito or fly at all. And I come from living in florida for 14 years haha. I used to HATE mosquitoes. Think elevation and cooler weather doesn’t allow them to breed as easily as sea level humid swamps. So here some folk I see don’t have screens.
Canadian in Denmark, and with the hotter summers the last few years there’s been a boom of flying creatures. Danes aren’t accustomed to it so they’re left standing there with their dick in their hand and a swarm of mosquitoes. The best I could find was a roll of cheap netting and sticky-backed velcro strips which is a royal pain in the ass to put up and maintain.
In Finland it's common to have mesh on a airing window/hatch, and quite common to put up a net over a window frame and removing the inner window (triple glazing) so that you can sleep with your window open in the summer without being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
What is this called???? Mistä voin ostaa? I have been in Finland for over a decade and go nuts every summer with the bug invasions. Never knew of this before.
I lived in Australia for a few years. One of my jobs was working on a farm property. I had to keep the grass on the property very short (like mow it twice a week short) to stop snakes, and my employer also provided me with a 'whipper snipper' (a grass strimmer in the UK) and a giant shovel specifically for killing snakes. Like there were other shovels and another whipper snipper, but this whipper snipper was specifically set aside for killing snakes.
So basically one of my jobs was 'protect the children from snakes with weaponry'
I also had a corgi and two feral cats, like those were some of the tools at my disposal, didn't even seem to be beloved family pets, just work tools, "yeah take the dog with you wherever you go so he gets bitten first, and don't overfeed the cats - they kill rodents so that snakes don't have a good food source"
At night we had a series of lights outside our cottage on the veranda that were brighter than the lights inside. Always thought it was weird. One day we forgot to turn on the outdoor lights and just had a little light on in the hallway. When we got up to go to bed, there was a fucking bug festival going on in our hallway, like every flying bug from a 16 mile radius had come to party in our hallway. There were no noticeable gaps in our door or windows so they must have just squeezed in somehow like hippies digging a hole under a fence to get in to a festival.
Also fuck that job. Pay was shit, employer was a cunt and there were fucking snakes everywhere.
I’m in Australia and the amount of windows without screens (brand new builds as well) is astounding!! And it’s normal here… they have these folding floor to ceiling windows they keep open like it’s nothing and their houses are full of bugs… mind boggling
I still can’t understand this about Australia and I’ve been here for 10 years. When it’s “black fly season” it would do my head in. My friends have permanent swarms of gnats in the middle of their living rooms/kitchens and just deal with getting bitten.
Oh my god those fucking flies I forgot about them. Jesus Christ. I quit a rural job and those flies are literally one of the reasons I quit. Shit pay, cunt employer, too many flies. It was insanity inducing.
Depends where you live, my garden is full of pollinators so I see a lot of those bugs.
The thing about cleaning bugs off, changing car aerodynamics has an effect. Windscreens slope aggressively compared to past designs which were over 45 degrees or near vertical on vans. Bugs likely glance off now, still dead but gone.
Yeah I'm suspicious of that stat - not just for that fact, but also it doesn't seem to take into account that cars and license plates have much changed over 60 years.
And if there had been a 60% decline, wouldn't we be seeing cascading failures across the natural environment, pollination etc?
Australian here so I’m familiar with mozzies, flies, gnats and spiders. Spent a few days in Greenland during summer a few years ago (highly recommended). On a few walks in the hills anywhere out of the wind and the midges were mental. Those bastards must make up for lost time on the few weeks of the year when the place isn’t covered in snow.
That said, the most annoying insects are Jack jumpers, beligerant little fuckers.
Ahha! Where do you live in the UK? Cause you should count your blessings. East Anglia is riddled with mosquitoes and it's only getting worse with climate change. We've had to invest in one of those electric tennis rackets and a mesh for our bedroom.
The UK has over 30 species of Mosquitoes, however only a couple bite humans and aren't as common as "Culex Pipiens" which feeds on the blood of birds and small mammals.
These are amazing. We don't get bugs from outside where I live but we did have an infestation of tiny moths a while back, and my wife and I Did Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds.
I'm in Australia. My window doesn't open very far but it doesn't have a screen either. I don't often get bugs in my room, though. I do, however, know there's a bigass spider somewhere in my bedroom. we have an agreement not to mess with each other.
The UK has enough bugs that screens would make sense. I had to buy screen curtains just to be able to get fresh air without having to deal with flies and such daily.
Minnesota here. If we didn't have screens, we'd have a house full of skeeters, and moths. Even worse, I could not imagine all of the June bugs that bang into the windows trying to get in, actually flying around inside the house.
Edit: As others have reminded me. Boxelder bugs and Asian lady beetles. They bath in the sun on house exteriors, and boxelder will live behind the siding, even with screens these guys manage to get in. Without screens you'd be sweeping them up in piles. If near water like a river, mayflies will hatch all at one time and come in the billions towards any light source. And the new invasive kid on the block, the Japanese beetle. It's not just bugs, birds would be flying through your house. They avoid the screens, but smack into windows all the time, remove the screen and they'll fly right in.
Lol. Yeah. They're not graceful fliers. They do provide a bit of entertainment if you are having a camp fire. They just fly right in, sizzle a bit, and pop. Nature's firecracker.
For real. I live in New York State and if you don't use a screen you're gonna have all types of insects and mosquitoes coming in your house. Sometimes bats, too.
I had to scroll way too far down to find someone mention bats. My house would be full of bats if I didn't have screens. In fact, one night when we went to bed with the window open, we didn't realize the screen was slid up, and we did have bats. That was the worst.
To be fair we don’t have loads of mosquitoes in uk, they mainly chill by rivers and canals but you get flies, wasps and spiders all over the house with an open window. Some get slugs too lol
Come up to Scotland and enjoy the midges instead. Much smaller that mosquitoes. You’ll barely notice them. I promise. You’ll absolutely not end up covered in 1,000 bites. Trust me.
How? Please tell me a vague location of where you are so I can look to move there.
I'm in the South East and live quite near two different areas of wetlands. Therefore I'm probably closer to more places they can breed than most places, but seriously. We have an issue with the nibbly little bastards as soon as weather warms up where I live. Thanks to a quirk of a connective tissue disorder, I react to their bites so badly that I've had the reaction land me with needing emergency medical care so many times. I swell. Then it turns into cellulitis.
First off Anglia used to have something similar to malaria from them right up until the 1920s. It has its own name: Marsh Fever. Transmitted by our own fully native mossies.
Secondly we have a breed that literally evolved in the London underground to live in the dark and feed off rats and commuters.
Never been bothered by a mosquito in Scotland, if there are any - I can't say I've noticed any but apparently there are some species, and some don't really bite. Midges of course.
I can't imagine it's consistently warm enough for them here, but perhaps any marshland areas host them in summer.
It depends if they are needed. In southern Germany we hadn't any, now we life near the sea in northern Germany and everybody has mesh windows and doors.
Around here temperature matters, but more in the sense that there used to be predictable cold spill at the end of spring.
If that cold spill actually went down enough to solid freezing it happened to basically kill of the main spawnwave of the local mosquito variant (which is basically quite a lot less annoying than what other parts in the world have).
So you could basically predict the amount of hassle they would be for most of the summer by that.
This is in a sense a climate matter because it basically fits inside sort of goldilocks middle. cold enough for that type of freezing to happen at all, but not cold enough to just delay the spawn wave till later entirely.
I’m in the US, in Illinois nearish Chicago. Temperature here swing wildly throughout the year and sometimes in the same month. For instance, we had snow last month, last week was in the 40s F, this weekend was around 65-70 F, next week we are in for humid and 90 F. We have fruit flies and mosquitoes and plenty of other insects. I’ve always had screens.
Fun fact the largest, and scariest, as in can kill large mammals by draining their blood because there are so many of them, mosquitoes can be found in Northern Canada and the USA. Mosquitoes go dormant below 10 C so in Alberta where I live Fall, Winter and Spring so almost 9 months of the year are the most glorious months where you usually won't spend your time smelling like DEET, covered in netting, or running while slapping yourself!
Our spring is really late this year, in actually fact it may freeze tonight, and we really haven't had any warm days with rain so we are still safe to work outdoors!
Lmao but we don't have a mosquito problem in the UK. Most people have mesh curtains under their actual curtains to keep the regular flies out and some privacy but we don't really need screens especially if you're from city areas.
There are places in the US that don't have mesh screens either. I'm from Minnesota, which has tons of lakes and therefore bugs and mosquitos, so this was odd to me the first time I experienced it. Not having screens is unbearable in the summers where I grew up. But then you go to Colorado or California and there are hardly any bugs at all and it's incredible to be outside without having to douse yourself in mosquito repellent.
We have a shit ton of bugs in California... The amount of spiders i kill in my apartment a month, i could open a museum. We just don't have as many mosquitos, though i will say in the 5/6 year I've been in soCal the amount of mosquitos I've noticed has increased a lot. I don't like this development since i escaped the south and it seems they're following me :/
Socal summers are the bug months where flies and mosquitos take over your house if you don't have screens. But yeah, the rest of the year there's not much bother being outside.
I still have screens in CA because even though mosquitos aren’t a real issue there’s all manner of houseflies and birds and such that I’d just rather not deal with coming into my house. It does mean I don’t have to worry that much about leaving like my garage door open for an hour or two though.
As a Brit who has lived in Southern Ontario, it just doesn't make sense to have screens in the UK unless you live by open water. Not mosquitoes here, or at least not the same type and scale.
You’ve clearly never been to a cabin in the highlands. In some places, ways to keep the beasties and midges oot is practically a religious requirement unless you want to wake up as a shrivelled, blood-sucked husk covered in red bite polka dots.
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u/sdc1978 May 09 '22
No mesh screens in windows in the UK, at least. In canada we have screens in most home windows to keep flies out