Blood-suckers, ankle-biters, drill bugs – call them what you want – but if you feel like mosquitos are everywhere this year – they are!
Allie Webb shows me the large mosquito zapper in her yard in Moorpark which she bought recently to help protect her and her family from the biters, which she says are making her yard unpleasant to be in.
"We call them ankle biters. They're just.... they kind of hover in the grass," she showed me.
She's lived in this area her whole life, but says she's never suffered as badly from so many mosquito bites.
"Usually mosquito season ends early summer. But they're just coming out of the woodworks now, literally, and not just in the evening time. They're in the daytime, too," she said.
Webb says she's tried everything to deter them from biting - from the plug in zapper to various repellents. And it's not just the number of bites, but they seem to be more irritating, too.
"I am the blood type that gets eaten alive and one of the Os. So apparently it's your blood that depends on what your reaction is. So mine turn into golf ball sizes! Mine get really large and hot and I have to use a steroid cream so my kids don't have the same reaction," said Webb.
"For myself, I use the hard core stuff. I have DEET, I have DEET sport. I usually keep about four cans outside. So when we have company over, they can all cover themselves," she said.
Webb isn't alone. This year has seen an increase in the number of mosquitoes, says Kary Svoboda, the Vector Ecologist for the County of Ventura.
"You're not imagining it. You're not alone. The numbers are really high and they've been very busy," he said.
They are an aggressive species of mosquito that just a few years ago we didn't encounter at all here.
"We have had the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito since 2020 in Ventura County. Over the last four years they've spread their infestation and they're established and a lot of people are suffering their bites," said Svoboda.
"It'll bite people up. Daytime and nighttime, unlike most of our native mosquito species. They have been having a great summer with all the rain we had during the winter and the spring sat around for quite a while and gave all mosquito populations a boost," he said.
"And then we had the tropical Storm Hillary give significant amounts of rain in late August, which is really rare. And all those eggs that it lays ahead of time, which is another thing that's fairly unique there, wading in all objects, surfaces, structures, plants, etc., that can hold even as little as a teaspoon of water. So with all those eggs just sort of waiting for the perfect conditions, in late August, we had a huge population come out and addition to the big population that was already around," he explained.
Webb is doing all the right things to try to protect herself and her family from getting bitten, advises Svoboda. But if you have a water feature in your yard, a breeding ground for the mosquitos, there's also something else available.
"The county gives out free mosquito fish - which are a type of guppy that loves to eat mosquito larva - to people with water features like ponds or fountains. Stocking those things with these little fish are a great way to ensure that they're not going to be full of mosquitoes," said Svoboda.
And hopefully the change in season will mean fewer mosquitoes around to gorge themselves on us.
