As a Minnesota boy, born and bred, that's an easy one for me to answer.
Officially the state bird is Anopheles horribilis, illustrated in this attached photograph from the journal "Nature".
Those critters are so large, that as a kid we'd swat 'em with baseball bats. That is, in the seasons when we weren't walking 10 miles to school each way, barefoot, in the snow, uphill both directions.
Grizz
I was backpacking on the Pow Wow Trail in N. Minnesota in 2000, tarping with bugnet and the black flies were so horrible that I could not stop walking or I was suddenly wearing a "fly suit". In the evening the flies would go off duty and out would come the skeeters. As I was sleeping I would wake up and check my map to see if I was near a road as I thought it was road noise. No, it was a wall of mosquitoes outside of my tarp net. I was inside the Boundry Waters area so there were no roads. I had never, ever seen and heard so many. Impressive pests.
Shug
Whooooo Buddy)))) All Secure in Sector Seven
In my college age years, at the end of summer and before classes started (for me in mid-September), a friend and I would journey up to the BWCA for a week. Our habit was to paddle in, 2 days travel, to a favored site where we'd set up base camp, and for the mid-portion of the week make day trips from there.
The first frost had always occurred by the time we went (late August / early September) so the usual insects weren't around. But one year when we set up at base camp, when the food came out, out also came the yellow jackets. Swarms of them, covering the food being cooked, covering the food on the spoon on the way to the mouth. After a couple of meals we realized it was time to find another site....
Grizz
I am one of those cursed by the mozzie. They will fly past 100 people just to get at me.
On a TV program about the mosquito, it was reported that it comes down to lots of different factors as to who they bite. First, believe it or not, is blood type. Blood-type markers are chemicals released by people of a specific blood type.
If you have O-type blood you are first on the list. In the televised experiment the 2 men with O-type blood got the most bites by far.
Next is how much CO2 you put out. If you have a larger CO2 signature than your friends you are easier to smell and find. The same goes for heat. If you are a "sweater" they can home in on that too.
It also turns out that if you are drinking alcohol or if you are pregnant adds to the problem too and will ring the dinner bell on the little blighters.
One last note... avoid getting DEET on your hammock or any synthetic gear. DEET eats holes in them.
Do one thing every day that scares you!
Great.
Type O and I sweat. That explains a lot.
absolute necessity up here. skeeters, black flies, and deer flies rule supreme from june to sept. I have hammocked without netting during this time, and with a bug shirt or face net, it was miserable. They plaster across the netting trying to get you. Only body odour, and a weeks bath the the smoke of 2 campfires / day combined with about a hundred layers of encrusted deet seem to neutralize them. First few days are always rough. Last few days always seem to have fewest bugs.
btw - my HH's are truly encrusted with deet, and have no holes in them. My ULBA has been going strong for maybe 4 years and has seen perhaps 12-15 direct applications of deet, and indirectly perhaps 40-50 times with rub off from my body.
If there are no bugs. ... hope you packed your winter gear.
Last edited by turk; 04-04-2008 at 22:45.
I have type O blood, but don't seem to get bothered my skeeters much. Deer flies and horse flies we have here in Ky like me though.
Chris
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