Mosquito Squad Blog

It’s been a wonderful year for Mosquito Squad, and we hope that 2009 brought you happiness and joy.  We want to take a moment to thank all of you for your continued interest in our Company, our services, and, of course, our blog.  Thank you for all of your contributions to our success and growth.  2010 is almost here, and we are looking forward to all of the wonderful possibilities that the new year and the upcoming mosquito and tick season bring.  So join us for the ride and we’ll see you next year.

We wish you peace, joy, and prosperity in 2010!

Happy New Year from our Mosquito Squad family to you and your family!

We hope that this Christmas season has been the brightest and best for you and yours.  We’re wishing you a Christmas full of cheer, joy, lights, happinees, cookies, friends and family, and all of the things that make this season so wonderful!

Merry Christmas to you and yours from all of us here at

By:  Jennifer Imler

The economic downturn manifests itself in numerous ways, including an increase in foreclosed homes.  Abandoned properties affect the neighborhood in expected ways (such as decreased property values) and in unexpected ways (such as a surge in mosquito populations).  Rats, bugs, and those pesky mosquitoes move in as soon as your neighbor moves out, creating a public health hazard by increasing the risk of diseases such as West Nile virus. 

Mosquitoes need standing water to hatch their eggs, but can do so in as little as a bottle cap or tablespoon of water.  So abandoned swimming pools, even ones that are drained, present the perfect breeding site for mosquitoes, carriers of the West Nile Virus.  One abandoned swimming pool can support more than a million mosquitoes, with those one million mosquitoes affecting neighborhoods within a five-mile radius. 

With the rise in foreclosures and abandoned swimming pools, comes a rise in the risk of West Nile virus, creating a public health hazard.  Some cities with high foreclosure rates are responding to neighbor complaints by introducing mosquito fish, which eat mosquito larvae, to the abandoned pool.  Mosquito fish are rather hardy with large appetites, consuming up to 200+ mosquito larvae a day.  While introducing mosquito fish to the infected area can prevent a mosquito population explosion, these fish should never be introduced into natural streams, lakes, rivers, ponds or other local water sources.

As long as foreclosures continue to rise, abandoned swimming pools will increasingly continue to pose a public health hazard.  So what can you do to help protect your family and your neighborhood?  Notify your local or county Health Department about the foreclosed or abandoned property.  Check out our previous blog post on Site Sourcing for tips on how to reduce the mosquito population in your yard.  You can also call Mosquito Squad.  We offer a low-cost Abandoned Pool Service.  We treat the infected property and the abandoned swimming pool with larvacide to help protect your neighborhood from the nuisance and diseases associated with mosquitoes.

For more information on mosquito fish, please see:  Mosquito Fish Facts

For more information, please see the following article from UPI.com:  Foreclosures Bring Out the Bugs

By: Damien Sanchez

Well, it has been a while since my last post, I hope everyone enjoyed the article By Jura Koncius of the Washington post, we were certainly excited to have had the opportunity to be interviewed.  I would like to thank Holly Hartel and her  family for graciously making time for the interview, Holly and the girls did a great job and if you missed the article click on the link above!

We had a great year for 2009, Jennifer, my office manager came on in June and is hard at work everyday.  It’s amazing how much time a business can consume, but she does a great job and I am blessed to have her on board! She will be starting to contribute posts hopefully this week, so I hope you all enjoy them!  Mosquito Squad as a Franchise had a banner year for 2009.  OLB sold 20 new franchises, 4 of them in the capital region, so for those of you near Fredricksburg, Annapolis, or Fredrick and East Montgomery County,  you will now have a local franchise to better serve you.

This year was a great year, I had the oportunity to meet so many new customers and vendors.  We were blessed with the opportunity to donate to the Junior League of Washington’s annual fundraiser.  Great organization, I would encourage anyone interested in volunteering to do so; teaching literacy is very important check out the link above and get involved.  Well that is the short and sweet year in review.

Now on to the purpose of this post, earlier this year I  intended to write a post about my “brush with death” (OK, this is some what of an exaggeration, but I was really really sick) on the W&OD trail.  On a Friday evening I was out on the trail when I passed  through some tall grass on my way home.

As I passed through the tall grass I did think about ticks, especially since I am in the tick  control business.  I did my typical quick tick check and showered once I was home.  Saturday I felt fine all day; I did my typical morning routine and we had a fun day hanging out with the family and going to Costco.  Sunday morning, however, I woke up with an itchy and scratchy throat.  When I went to shower I noticed a small black pimple on my waist (0r what I thought was a pimple) I started to scratch at it and I pulled it a little and noticed this tiny pimple was flat and black.  Then I realized it was a tick!

I proceeded to remove the tick, see my post on protecting yourself from tick bites, using my fingers (I didn’t read my own post, you should always use tweezers so you can reach as close to the base of the head as possible) and pulled the tick out.  Thankfully I made sure I had gotten the head out .  I then placed it in a zip lock bag, sealed it, put it in a second zip lock bag and then placed it in the freezer.  I saved the tick because I wanted to send it off to a lab for examination.

I didn’t have a bullseye rash yet but I did monitor it for several days.  Through out Sunday my condition worsened, I thought for sure I had Lyme disease!  I scheduled an appointment with my doctor and looked for information on where I could send the tick for testing.

With a little research online I found a company called Clongen Labratories located in Germantown MD, I contacted them and for under $200  I sent my tick in and they tested it for 4 common bacteria that ticks carry, including Lyme.  I received results in less than a week.  Thankfully the results came back negative, but as a precaution I had gotten a prescription for some strong antibiotics in case the results came back positive, needless to say I didn’t need to take them.  So it turns out all I had was a bad case of the flu for about a week.

I wanted to share this story because I have a long historyof dealing with ticks (see my post on Lyme Disease).  Having dealt with ticks for some time, I am more aware than most of the potential for infection by a tick bite.  I routinely do a self check for ticks after I have been to untreated properties or out on the W&OD trail, but even I missed a tick after 2 showers, 48 hours and an inspection.  This tick was on my bare skin too along my waistband and I still didn’t catch it for 2 days.  These ticks are incredibly smalland easy to miss.  Thankfully I didn’t get  it this time, but I will be checking a lot better now, so should you.

This week, June 21-27, 2009 is Mosquito Control Awareness Week, as designated by the American Mosquito Control Association (AMCA).  Locally, here in Fairfax County, Virginia, the Fairfax County Health Department’s Disease Carrying Insects Program has been raising awareness through their “Fight the Bite” campaign and educational material on their website.  You may have seen signs or banners for “Mosquito Control Awareness Week” as you were driving along Fairfax County Parkway or other major thoroughfares this week, and with the mosquitoes out in full force this summer, the hope is to raise awareness of mosquito-borne diseases and how you can protect yourself.

For personal residences you can do a few practical things to reduce the number of mosquitoes such as eliminate mosquito breeding sites around your home.  You can also call a mosquito control professional to come out and apply insecticides.

Our company, Mosquito Squad of Northern Virginia, offers mosquito and tick control services for both personal residences and commercial sites.  To find out more information about our barrier spray services and how you can “fight the bite”, please visit our website.