Putting stinky socks on goats a small price to keep the bugs off

When the June bugs showed up in May I felt like a hotel desk clerk looking at someone trying to check in a week early. I'm sorry. We have you down for the 1st. Not surprised they can't read the date; June bugs are the stupidest bugs in creation, which is saying something. Dumb, but happy: I'm a gonna buzz HERE and then HERE and then GO DOWN YOUR SHIRT and BUZZ so you throw lemonade everywhere when you bolt out of your chair and then I'm going to HANG on the wall and DIE.

Really, that's what they do: At some point the June bug just says "well, that was fun" and dies on the spot. They serve no use as far as I can tell, but the dog likes them. They're like playful croutons.

There are a series of three back-yard insects: the June Bug is the opening act, the cicadas bring the show to a close, and in-between it's mosquitoes, the bugs that make you slap yourself every seven seconds.

If they only attacked your forehead, the summer would be filled with people who look like they'd just forgotten something.

Last Wednesday I was slapping and itching, thinking "The mosquitoes are really bad tonight." As opposed to the nights when they are very good, and help out around the house.

How many are out there? I called Mike McLean, communications coordinator with the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District, to coordinate some communications.

"I always say these are Carl Sagan numbers."

Wonderful. Billions and billions.

"It's hard to get a handle on it. We have a dipper on a stick, and if you measure the number of mosquitoes in a particular site, and you get two mosquitoes per dip, you're talking a million in that 1-acre area. Sometimes we get 15 per dip. You multiply that by a couple hundred thousand of mosquito breeding sites."

I'd rather not. The problem is, the mosquitoes do the multiplying.

McLean says this is shaping up to be a normal year. I guess that means you'll be down a pint by August, unless you try the usual precautions. Such as:

• Lactic acid attracts the yellow fever mosquito, so don't spread milk all over yourself in the twilight hours. They also love socks, research says, especially socks that have been worn a lot.

If you soak your socks in old milk, you might as well just open a vein and lie down and wait.

They also like some kinds of cheese. Think about that. Cheese is a human invention, fairly recent as far as the history of the universe goes. This means mosquitoes waited millions of years for us to say "Lo, Let there Be Cheese," and the mosquitoes think this stuff is incredible. Wonder what it's like paired with a nice red, they might say.

Perhaps when they whine right in your ear they're saying I'd prefer a redolent smear of Limburger, if you don't mind, but you don't know because you slap the side of your head so hard you get a trial membership in the Tinnitus Society for the next 10 minutes.

• Stake a goat out in the yard, 20 feet from people. Upside: mosquitoes will be drawn to its exhalations then leave disgusted, because whew, that thing, man.

Downside: neighbor looks over the fence, sees you putting cheese-filled socks on the goat and sprinkling it with milk, and thinks "I don't mean to be judgmental, but Satanism cannot be good for property values."

• Spray chemicals on your skin that make you feel as if you've been dipped in DEET and replaced your blood with floral-scented turpentine. Upside: works. Downside: your DNA is rewritten at the molecular level.

You have many from which to choose. There's Deep Woods, which brings to mind a choking cloud of chiggers eager to chigg. This is Maximum Strength. Who wants Just Enough Strength? No Deep Woods for me, I prefer to be lightly chigged.

As far as I'm concerned, every spray should be sufficient to make horseflies the size of hamsters stop, take a knee, and cough their guts out.

There's the "Family Safe" varieties, which do nothing at all for up to 12 hours, but they are waterproof.

• Citronella. People swear by this. As in "That *$(*(#$#(@# doesn't do (#*@." Perhaps your experience is better than mine, but I've staked out so many citronella tiki torches I think we diverted some planes overhead that were coming in to land. Did they work? Yes. Now and then a mosquito flew into the flame. I might as well have set the lawn on fire for all the good it did.

On the other hand, I have all the props needed to celebrate Hawaiian statehood, and Amazon will deliver a pig on a spit for free if you have Prime. So it all evens out.

• Plastic bracelet filled with chemicals mosquitoes don't like. These work very well, inasmuch as the part of your skin covered by the bracelet doesn't get bit. Much.

• Bats. They love to eat mosquitoes, but there's something about having a leather-winged fanged creature hanging from your arm like an upside-down falcon that doesn't appeal to everyone.

Growing up in Fargo, they sprayed. And I mean sprayed. Low-flying planes misted the neighborhood, and everything smelled like poison. Oh, the good old days. C'mon, Dad, let's go heap the roof with asbestos so the spray doesn't melt the shingles like last year! But we didn't have any mosquitoes. Until it rained. Then there would be billions and billions, as Carl Sagan said about the stars.

Hey, there's an idea: a small black hole placed on the patio, sucking all the mosquitoes into its pitiless orbit. I will take two.

jlileks@startribune.com 612-673-7858