Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

"I'm hearing from people, they're in tears there are so many mosquitoes."

Said UW-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri.

There are 54 different types of mosquitoes in Wisconsin, he said. "The ones that will make or break a summer we call summer floodwater mosquitoes."

They can lay eggs and those eggs will stay dormant for as long as three years. "It's almost like little time bombs out there," Pellitteri said. Once standing water hits them, they hatch....

"It's just crazy. This is unlike anything we've ever seen before with mosquitoes, that's for sure," said Tom Leonard, assistant store manager at Elliott's Ace Hardware in West Allis.

"I've been doing this for 30 years. This is the first time where almost every customer through the door says, 'Where's your mosquito repellent?'"

We had a terrible encounter with mosquitoes last week in the Kettle Moraine here in southern Wisconsin. But on Monday and Tuesday, we were all the way north, at the Apostle Islands National Seashore, where we went on a long hike through the woods, wore no repellent, and got no bites. Yesterday, we were hiking a little further south, at Morgan Falls and Copper Falls, and though we were able to hike without resorting to repellent, we got a few bites. So people bitch (and itch) about the mosquitoes in Wisconsin, but the northern tier is also Wisconsin. Check it out! We saw some highly scenic places, and though it's the peak of the season, we were often the only or almost the only people there.

Full post as published by Althouse on August 12, 2010 (boomark / email).