Trapping and Killing Mosquitoes

With additional photos, you probably guess what I was doing with those dustbins and Electric pan. 

To trap and kill mosquitoes.  

Mosquitoes are probably one of the most dangerous vectors in helping to spread a number of diseases in tropical countries: (a) Malaria (b) dengue fever (c) chikungunya (d) yellow fever (e) filariasis (f) Japanese encephalitis (g) recently, the zika fever.

In our country, dengue fever is the most common diseases. There were almost 70,000 cases during the first seven months in 2015, an alarming figure. Japanese encephalitis is another fearful one. I have a young education agent who helped my son to apply to study in UK. He got this disease a few years back. He lost his memory from high school onward. He could not remember his wife, his children, his degree and his work.He had to quit his job and figured out everything again.

Zika fever is a recent spread, scaring all pregnant ladies out of the wit.

Many methods had been tried by Authorities to get rid of mosquitoes, especially the Aedes mosquiotoes, but seemed to be of not much help. Insecticide sprays/fogging, getting rid of stagnant water, educating/fining the people (but most people thought that would not happen to them) and introducing genetically modified mosquitoes, but the numbers seem to be not dropping drastically. You may be able to get rid of the mosquitoes within your house compounds but you cannot get rid off outside the house, the poorly maintained water stagnant drains/ unevenly settled drains, the ground depressions, the unwanted tyres/bottles/containers, the swamps nearby, etc, all becoming the breeding grounds of the mosquitoes. You just cannot get rid off the mosquitoes in the farms or forest. Every time I was in the farm, there were at a hundred mosquitoes following me.The "ngie-ngie noise was just irritating. Of course, I made sure that my skin was fully covered except the face.

I came out with this cheap method of reducing mosquitoes, five baskets placing along the cool/dark corners of the corridor/terrace outside my house proper. Every morning about 7.30am, I would put a Chinese made electric Bat(look like a tennis racket) into the basket, shake the basket and there I heard “park-park-park”, I knew I got the mosquitoes who would explode into atoms by the high voltage.

They are easy preys because of their life cycle characteristics. When mosquitoes just emerge from the water, they need a few hours or more to grow bigger, get the wings solid and to adjust.They need a place to stay.A cool and dark corner with black plastic will be nice place to rest.

Baskets with some rubbish/dusts/leaves tend to attract more mosquitoes, and with this method I had been able to kill at least 30-60 per day. The first round in the early morning would yield the most numbers but by later afternoon, there would be hardly any.

Don't under-estimate that average 45 numbers per day, it means 16,000 per year if you are disciplined. The greatest numbers in reduction is you prevent them to reproduce perhaps 300 eggs each time per female mosquito. Of course, if there are one million people doing that, sixteen billions of mosquitoes will be wiped off from earth’s surface.

It only costs (4nos x RM8 + 1no x RM18) = RM50 (US$12) per household.