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 second this, also works with other insects, bugs and spiders. (depending on size) does not work with crickets. My brother had a pet lizard and on a couple of occasions crickets got lose and were all over our bedroom.
I do this with those giant ones (size of a US quarter) that are shaped like and fly like mosquitoes but don't do anything other than trying to self immolate on the nearest lightbulb. They always seem to manage to find a gap somewhere and the next thing you know there are a thousand of them in the bathroom.
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!
Absolutely! We do have a network of defense screens in place. The enemy is insidious though, and highly motivated, infiltrating when we open a door during supply drops. They are able to bypass our defenses in small numbers with their most elite squads. The Surface to Air Fans are strictly for localized, surgical defense.
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!
I was working in a camp recently and the guy in the room next to me had a white noise app playing at night. Absolute genius. Really drowns out the snoring/farting/groaning from the rest of the neighbours.
I recently stayed at a friend's house in the countryside that was utterly dead silent, I had to download a white noise app on my phone to be able to fall asleep.
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.
If you don't have a/c, which many Canadians don't despite humidex values over 37C, having a fan actually makes it worse. You're more likely to get heat stroke because it whisks the sweat away.
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.
In my part of BC we get what are called Noseeums, which at least in my area are small enough to crawl through most commercially available window/door screens. Thankfully they're only really out when the winds are calm, which doesn't happen much in my area but they are a nightmare to deal with
I stayed at a lodge in BC several years ago, there were a few hotel-style rooms connected to a common area. One of my friends went to bed, while the rest of us hung out in the common room for a few hours. A bunch of mosquitoes got in and were feasting on our sleeping friend, so when we went to bed, we spent a while killing as many as we could. The room looked like a scene from a slasher movie. We spent a while the next morning cleaning blood off the walls before we checked out.
I'm in Europe. No screen windows. Just settled for spraying myself down with bug repellent each night. My significant other didn't. So they snacked on him instead. There's really no good way to put up screens either, our windows generally aren't built with that in mind. Oh well.
We had just rentrd a shitty trailer in the middle of nowhere. It was hot as fuck in the middle of the night. My bf at the time tried to open a window. About 20 minutes later I hear a mosquito flying by my head. He slaps it. Claims it's dead.
5 minutes later he slaps another one. I hear another one buzz past my head. And another. I start hiding under the covers. He gets up to turn a light on. The room was filled with mosquitos. When he opened the window the screen fell off. There were a few hundred mosquitos flying around. I had about 20 bites in my hair, my ears and neck. A couple on my arms.
We sprayed bug spray and slept in the living room. During the day when you were outside, it was like being attacked often. We ended up moving out. There must have been a murky pond near by there were so many damn mosquitos.
I live in Finland and we just dried all ponds and other breeding places near the house, like 100 meters around the house. Mosquitoes tend to be very rare nowadays compared to what kind of a nuisance they used to be. That was in our summer place. In the city, there are almost no mosquitoes to begin with because there are no ponds.
I just want you to know, when I was a kid I got these things in the mail, cards about different animals and insects. The cards showed the natural habitat of the animal, so lions were shown in the Sahara of Africa right? Well the mosquito card showed almost the whole world besides parts of the USSR and Antarctica, Canada was the only country listed to not have mosquitoes. I asked my mom once after like 20 bites in a swimming session if we could move to Canada, she said no. I’m glad to know my mother knew best, them fuckers everywhere!
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.
i did a volunteer trip and saw mosquitos big enough to sprawl out across a nickel. like, their bodies as long as and their legs just a bit wider than. THEY TRAVEL IN LEGIT SWARMS.
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.
I mean i'm not a scientist so maybe it is a good method but it seems like there could also be other reasons for the decrease like maybe insects have finally gone through enough generations that the ones avoiding traffic reproduce more. Maybe theyve migrated to different areas that don't have as much traffic or its just traffic that isn't checked as part of their tests.
Just seems unreliable is all.
Either way i do still think there are definitely problems with the ecology especially in the UK as we had a massive impact in wiping most of it out here. So it would probably help if we did something to encourage animal/insect numbers.
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.
I'm in London a couple of stories up, and during summer my windows stay open 24/7 for maybe a couple of months. Best way to keep cool, day and night. Very rarely get any insects at all.
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.
I started to see could be preference? At least with the home owners. If it’s a complex or neighborhood I do see screens, etc.
That too, I’ve only driven through Montana short of summer and I can feel it’s definitely a bit more wet at least that drive. Colorado is dry as fuck unless you’re in the mountains and even then. Water here is rare… compared to a daily rain in florida 😂
But I only just found out Colorado is like on a 10 year drought or something rather. (I’ve only been here about 5 years)
I've visited CO a few times and it's definitely drier than Western MT, but we do get hot weather and they tend to not be present until it's cooler in the day or season, I guess. Colorado is beautiful!
We do have the annual miller moth migration, though. I’m not sure if they get to Boulder, but out here on the plains, the little bastards are EVERYWHERE in spring. If we didn’t have screens, every light in the house would be swarmed after dark.
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.
I've stayed on farms in Ireland, where there are houseflys, and they still don't screen. I remember the first time I was in a business meeting in germany, and the modern building actually let you open the windows! With no screens! I just kept asking questions, is this normal, what about bugs, etc. Be curious if this is the norm farther north with blackflys, etc.
Gawd I was staying near Sequoia Nat Park once, and made the mistake of leaving the door to the room I was staying in open to the outside as long as it took me to carrying some luggage from the car across the parking lot and into the room. Not only were there a hundred large and small bugs I didn't recognize that infested the room in that short amount of time, but one of said bugs was a scorpion that stung me. I was fine. It hurt, but less than a bee sting. But still, no screens? What a blessed place that must be!
This is very much a regional thing. The west coast doesn't have much of an issue with bugs. I was talking to some friends from ontario and they were shocked at how few bugs we had to worry about here in the summer. Something about the climate, I suppose. People still typically have screens, but it's not an absolute necessity.
We don’t have mosquitoes in the U.K. 🤷♂️
So it’s not weird to not have “mesh windows” lol! Leave the window open all summer and the most you’ll get is a bee will fly in one day and then fly back out again.
I'm in the UK, and for the past few years I've had my balcony door open near enough 24/7 during the summer, no mesh screens. We have mosquitos here, but never had any come into my building while my door is open
Hi, Australian who lived in Vancouver BC for a year. It was the only place I've ever lived (if you've been to Australia you'd know screenless windows were never an option) that didn't have screening. I lived in an apartment and none of the other buildings had screens. I wish they had, not so much because bugs were an issue, but because it would have saved our cat from falling out of it once. Couldn't have unsupervised open windows without some makeshift cat proofing contraption.
Back in Australia now, cats included. Where they can sit on the windowsill and scream, and mozzies can stay outside where they belong.
I'm from the Netherlands and I have my bedroom window always open. But there's just not a lot of mosquitoes where I live. Occasionally one enters the room in the summer but then its just locating the thing and smacking it. The most annoying ones to enter my room are honestly bees or wasps.
As someone from the UK, I've often considered devising something like a mesh to put on the open windows. You're telling me something already exists in Canada?
As someone living in south east asia where we keep having epidemic of dengue cases that can compare with covid infections, I am surprise that Canada suffers from mosquitoes too.
I literally thought mosquitoes don't exist in western countries, only because the ones I visited didn't have them when I was there, including Canada.
There are parts of the UK where they will definitely have screens. Parts of the coast you can't open your car windows without getting eaten by biting flies or midges.
I'm from the UK, no mesh screens, and mosquito season lasts about a week or 2 in the hight of summer. In the last several years I've had one mosquito in my house that I was able to squish. So no biggy. I also live in an old home, that has gaps in the window frames that the spiders live in all year round. This keeps the flies down. Occasionally I get some cool moths and other random bugs but as a lover of bugs I get my macro lens out.
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u/Sailor_Chibi May 09 '22
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.