Mosquito swat team has your back in South Mississippi

Ricky Williams is out hunting — checking the traps he has set across Harrison County — and if we’re lucky, he won’t have much luck.

On this particular Tuesday morning in early July, he’s hunting mosquitoes for Harrison County Mosquito Control. And he catches them with a New Jersey Light Trap, which lures them with a light, sucks them down into the trap with a fan and collects them in a small mesh cup.

He’s not trying to wipe them out, he’s trying to locate them. If he finds enough, that’s a cue for the sprayer trucks to visit that area at night.

“They’ve been around since the dinosaurs,” he said. “We’re not going to get rid of them. We can knock them back.”

Mosquitoes have been around, in fact, since the Cretaceous period, which ended in a mass extinction that took out the dinosaurs. Mosquitoes survived.

And when humans arrived, mosquitoes became the most dangerous animal on Earth. They spread malaria, which sickens up to 700 million people a year by some estimates. That disease is relatively rare in the U.S., though, with 63 outbreaks between 1957 and 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But other mosquito-borne illnesses that can be deadly — West Nile and an array of encephalitides — persist here. Then there is Zika, which has been around since the late 1940s. It’s been making headlines lately for its rapid spread in Central America and South America.

Health officials say people rarely die from Zika and hardly ever get sick enough to go to the hospital. But if a pregnant woman gets it, her child could be born with microcephaly, a birth defect where the baby’s brain has stopped growing.

So far in Mississippi, the only cases of Zika are in people who caught it outside the country.

Line of protection

Raymond Cuevas has been battling mosquitoes for 30 years, 25 of them with Harrison County. He has a budget of about $550,000 and a staff of eight full-time employees and two part-timers. He’s the boss, but he’s likely to be out in the field, helping monitor the mosquito population.

“Even though we don’t have Zika or West Nile cases down here now, we take both very seriously,” he said. “We are trapping for any mosquito that spreads a mosquito-borne virus.”

Over the years, Cuevas and his crew of 10 have developed a pretty good idea of where to find mosquitoes. Of course, in the dead of summer —the peak of the season — they are pretty much everywhere.

But there are places that are particularly vexing. Ditches that don’t drain. Low spots that hold water. Mosquito Control knows where they are.

“In the daytime, they go out checking for water, spraying the ditches, spraying for larvae,” he said.

Chemicals used there target mosquitoes but don’t harm other aquatic life, he said.

Life on the river

Then there are the rivers. When the rivers are low, mosquitoes lay eggs on the banks. They can lie there dormant for a long time, waiting for rain. When the water rises and covers the eggs, they hatch. The traps in those areas fill up fast.

“You don’t count them,” said Williams. “You weigh them.”

And despite all their efforts, Cuevas said, if you are outside unprotected at feeding time, you’re probably going to get bit.

“One person could get these diseases and not know,” he said. “Another, like a friend of mine, could end up on a walker, sick for months.”

He said avoid being outdoors at dawn and dusk if you can. And if you must be out, use a repellant containing DEET. Long pants and long sleeves make it tough on a mosquito looking for a place to bite.

Check your yard

Most mosquitoes, including the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads Zika and other diseases, don’t travel very far. So if you’re being bit, Cuevas said, your yard could be the breeding ground.

“It only takes a bottle cap full of water,” he said, repeating one of the most oft-told warnings in the war on mosquitoes. “And in a few days, you’ll have mosquitoes.”

That’s the kind of information his crew takes to the schools of Harrison County, where they put on a show and give out coloring books that explain the importance of mosquito control. The kids, Cuevas said, can get through to parents that Mosquito Control can’t reach.

The main message is watch out for standing water.

Water collects everywhere. In flower pots, on tarps, in boats and jet skis. He said they can even invade rain barrels regardless of whether they are protected by screens.

There are mosquito cakes that release a bacteria that kills mosquito larvae but won’t harm other animals or plants, he said. Other experts say a tablespoon of dish detergent once a week after a rain will break the surface tension of the water, causing mosquitoes to drown if they try to land on the water to lay eggs. Otherwise, the water should be used within five days.

Boat and jet ski owners should check those vessels and the tarps covering them for standing water.

He said his crew is on the lookout for yards that could be harboring standing water. For example, if they see a pool that’s stagnant, they hang a notice on the door of the house.

Most pools are being used so the water is treated and circulating and not attractive to mosquitoes, Williams said. But occasionally someone will move out and leave a full pool behind.

“That is a problem,” he said. “And we’ll take care of it.”

This story was originally published July 13, 2016 at 5:18 AM with the headline "Mosquito swat team has your back in South Mississippi."