by Mary Reid Barrow

“Bitter irony.”

That was how LRNow’s oyster restoration coordinator Brent James led off a recent text message he sent to all the staff after he watched a pesticide company spray shrubbery in front of a neighbor’s home one morning.

“As I walked by, I saw a good-sized dragonfly fly out of the bushes toward me,” Brent wrote, “and then flutter to the ground at my feet. He made a few last wing-flaps while on the ground, and then, sadly, he died.”

A dragonfly, he noted, is one of the best mosquito control services nature offers.

“It broke my heart to see this transpire,” Brent wrote.

He said he was reminded of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” Then, the widespread use of DDT was the issue.

“But this is really not very different,” Brent said. “These pesticide poisons kill the good insects just as efficiently as the ones we don’t want around.”

Brent sees a parallel between residents spraying for mosquitos and the complaints he gets from some residents about oyster reef construction.

“They all ‘love’ nature, clean water, and oysters, just not the oysters in my back yard,” he said.

Vince Bowhers, LRNow’s restoration coordinator, responded that, though he will never be able to prove it, he’s pretty sure the low yield in his vegetable garden a few years back was due to pesticide spraying.

“A landscaper was spraying for insects on invasive Japanese privet–double the irony–and the overspray was landing on my vegetable garden,” Vince wrote.

“I made the landscaper stop, but I think the damage was done,” he continued. “Very few blooms were pollinated in the garden that year, so the garden yield was significantly impacted.”

Folks, you don’t have to be a dragonfly to help control mosquitoes. My favorite motto is “mosquito dunks to the rescue.”

Get some dunks at the hardware store, drop a piece of one in all the standing water on your property, whether ponds, bird baths, flowerpot saucers, children’s toys or empty wheelbarrows. Dunks are harmless to you, your pets and other insects.

Dunks kill mosquito larvae in water where the mosquito has laid her eggs and that is where the trouble starts. One female mosquito lives a few weeks but can lay hundreds of eggs in her lifetime and males don’t bite and of course, don’t lay eggs.

Eliminating baby mosquitoes is the way to a mosquito-free summer and a productive life for the dragonflies, pollinators and other insects.