I’m supposed to be traveling to Philadelphia today for a training session that’s tomorrow. But the flight’s been cancelled. School opening is delayed. Roads are getting messy. The ground is white. The tv news is advising people who can stay home to do so. There’s a road and winter weather advisory until 10 am (my flight was at 11:25 am). Guinness was not impressed with his morning constitutional with Godiva and George.

Why?

Guinness surveys the natural mosquito repellant

Today the 3G Network and I woke up to something the weather reporters call “thunder snow”. It was thundering, lightning was flashing, and little round icy pellets were coming down. It felt a bit like getting hit by sand during a wind storm. Apparently it’s called “sleet”.

Guinness was not having any of it. It was wet and he hates wet. But I let him come back in, eat a little breakfast, then I made him go out again. I think he thought (as I did) that it would be like most north Texas extreme weather and stop in an hour or so. He wanted to go for a walk so at about 6 am, he started his usual campaign of wagging, looking out the window, pacing.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get his wish. As you can see from the photo, we have accumulation. So it was a swift sojourn around the neighborhood without much sniffing. Guinness was fine with that. He couldn’t get back to the sofa fast enough.

Still, I’m happy. Not because my flight is cancelled (it has been inconveniently rescheduled for around 8 pm tonight, causing me to miss the dinner part of my training meeting). I am happy because the mosquito population of north Texas is being naturally eliminated by the multiple days of  frost, snow and this weird pellet-y stuff.

Mosquitos are evil creatures with no redeeming value except being excellent bird treats. They cause heartworm in unprotected pets. It’s a horrible, nasty disease that slowly kills the cat or dog that gets it by destroying the cardiovascular system. In this human, they cause huge red welts that don’t go away for a long time. I am a mosquito magnet. No matter who much OFF I wear, they still love my blood.

I put mosquito dunks in our rain barrels to try to eliminate them. We change the bird baths daily (we have two because we have a huge bird population that ranges from hummingbirds to owls). We put down cedar granules on the yard and around the garden beds to repel them.

In 2012, the mosquitos were especially bad since we had a mild winter. Despite all of my efforts, I still got bit. I used OFF on our morning and evening dog walks. West Nile Virus was at an all-time high in Dallas. So the city decided to spay mosquito-cide aerially and also by truck.

It put me in a quandary. I wanted the mosquitos gone, but I didn’t like the idea of all those chemicals in the air.

While I doubt we’ll have a mosquito problem this year, I plan to do some additional research about what the city can do instead of spraying. Could they apply cedar-cide on a larger scale? Could they fine people who have unmaintained pools and ponds on their property? What about mosquito dunks in fountains?

How does your city handle the mozzies?