Dragonflies....Disease Fighting Insects!

  When you think about it, humans are great transmitters of disease. With all the worldwide travel going on these days, anything and everything can hitch a ride even unnoticed.  If a friend of mine traveled back from a trip abroad with a lovely mouse spider hidden in her suitcase, I am fairly certain that much tinier critters slip in with their travel host blissfully unaware.  Now add that to the critter transmitted diseases and thing could just get ugly!  Here lately, it seems that each summer brings a new threat of mosquito borne diseases that threaten to make life miserable, to say the least.  A lot of mosquito transmitted diseases are fatal which should make this high priority with those in charge of eradicating illnesses.  It should be fairly simple....get rid of mosquitoes and you get rid of those diseases....right?  Much easier said than done.  Mosquitoes will never fully be eradicated.  It ain't happenin', folks.  Mosquitoes, like roaches, will be around even when we, as humans, perish. 

  But!  There are a couple of things that folks, like you and me, can do to help!  First, empty those containers with standing water.  Birdbaths are terrible about harboring mosquito larvae and a lot of us neglect them. We stick the ornamental bath in the yard and never think about it again.  Bad idea.  Can you say....breeding haven for mosquitoes?  Yep, clean that thing at least once a week,,,or better yet, twice a week!  Another good idea is to encourage bats to inhabit your yard!  Contrary to what most skittish people think, bats do not hurt you!  They are a huge help in eating those biting critters that fly around our decks and porches.  Put up a bat house and enjoy their nightly show!  If you are so fortunate as to have a water feature in your yard (here, my Frog Pond!), make sure to allow dragonflies to breed there!  A few goldfish will keep the mosquito larvae limited but it will be the dragonfly nymphs that do the most damage to the bad critters.  Plus, once the nymphs morph into adult dragonflies, your yard will be a much safer place.  An adult dragonfly can eat several hundred mosquitoes in a single day!  Amazing!

  Here on the Bayou, it is hard to "empty" standing water.  It is everywhere.  Ummm....the Bayou, itself is "standing water".  That said, we have a ton of mosquitoes.  Those billions of bugs bite and have the potential of spreading disease like butter on toast.  So!  I have been encouraging the dragonflies to inhabit the Frog Pond.  Hopefully, I will be raising very hungry dragonflies!