Anyone Moving to the Caribbean

Dark Livingroom furniture

 

I wish someone would have told me.  It is not a good idea to have a lot of dark furniture in a climate with a large year round mosquito population.  This among many lessons I have had to learn the hard way.  Mosquitoes love to hide in the cherry and mahogany stained bookcases all day to come out for a blitz attack at night or day it doesn’t really seem to matter to them. 

The only real ace I have is my Zapper! I can “sweep” all the dark spots and get them before they get me… or not, but even if they get me I can still get them.  I have even been known to show a little leg as bait and zap them when they come (they always come) for a quick snack.  The house is never 100% mosquito free, but it is much more manageable now.  Even with the dark furniture.

Zapper

ME vs. the Mosquitoes

My biggest challenge so far is how to deal with the monster mosquitoes. They are constantly attacking me and my girls. A is covered in them and E was rubbing a bite on her wrist that then turned into a blister/boil so large that my neighbor was concerned enough to convince another neighbor to send a picture of it to her husband, a doctor. Great. At one point E, only 7 months old, had 9 bites literally from head to toe. I stopped counting A’s bites at 15 and never tried to count my own. Needless to say we were suffering.

This problem required a multi-faceted approach with troops fighting on many fronts. We went old school with the mosquito nets at night and found a bug replant that wasn’t toxic. I have to reapply it like 4 times a day but it was either that or cover the girls in something that was “hazardous to humans.”

I find myself wearing long dresses and pants the spraying Off on my ankles and feet.

Then there is the poison. I’ve only used the spray once on the plants (the owner recommended it) and we burn the coil outside on the covered terrace. E isn’t crawling yet and A doesn’t mess with the plants, but using the spray was a sort of last resort. The coil is great for short periods of time… I try not to think about what we are breathing in. Lately I have also been forgoing my cool tropical breeze (especially in the morning) and keeping the windows and doors closed.

I’m not sure what works and what doesn’t but there is a BIG difference in the amount of bites we’re getting from the first week to today :) I’ll try to find a less toxic way to deal with them when we move into our house, but for now I’m just glad not to see the girls covered in welts.