Community Corner

Swat — Splat! Connecticut Mosquitos Out in Force This Summer

The wet weather has spawned a record level of the annoying little bloodsuckers.

By Eileen McNamara

They're like tiny vampires, millions of them, looking for blood and indiscriminately victimizing any human they find.

The mosquito population in Connecticut this summer is burgeoning, as the insects are happily breeding in all the damp, wet places that the rainy weather has brought us. 

The state's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection recently recorded the highest number of mosquitos that the agency has ever trapped under its mosquito monitoring program.

The DEEPs mosquito surveillance program traps the insects throughout the summer and into the fall at 91 locations throughout the state. The DEEP does so to test mosquitos for West Nile and Eastern Equine Encephalitis, two viruses that are harmful to humans. 

Last week, agency officials trapped 32,561 mosquitos, more than what they had trapped, all combined, the previous three weeks,according to a report in the Hartford Courant. It was also the largest number of mosquitos trapped in one week in the history of the 16-year-old monitoring program the state runs. 

"They are driving all of us indoors," Philip Armstrong, an entomologist who runs the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station's mosquito surveillance program, told the Courant. "I get some mosquitoes around my house, but nothing like this where you are constantly getting harassed."

Luckily, the viruses so far have not been detected in the insects that were trapped, the newspaper reports.



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