That’s Bush as in the Alaska Bush, not the surname of two U.S. presidents. The Bush wave refers to the constant, frantic shooing of mosquitoes from in front of one’s face while outdoors. I understand that it’s called the “Aussie salute” in the land down under.
I don’t live in the Bush or the Outback, but I’ve been waving/saluting pretty steadily for the past couple of weeks. It’s a horrific year for skeeters here in Anchorage.
Not unprecedented, mind you. According to DF, residents used to kick in $25 apiece to have their neighborhoods sprayed with DDT so their kids could go out and play.
I’m from an area of South Jersey ringed by salt marsh. We had mosquitoes, horseflies, gnats and two other horrible biters called “greenheads” and “strawberry flies.” But they’re nothing like the Alaska State Bird.
Take a look at the picture below: It’s less than one day’s catch from our backyard mosquito magnet.
Based on a previous bug count DF did using grid paper (I love this man), he estimates there were about 500 bloodsuckers in this pile. Keep in mind that this is one mosquito magnet in one yard, and that it represents only the insects dumb enough to think that propane smells like human beings.
In other words, plenty more where those came from. Ask me how we know.
‘Misery and annoyance’
True story: Ivan Petrof faced harsh weather, wild animals, rough terrain and utter isolation when he did the first census of Alaska. But he counted mosquitoes the worst peril of all.
Specifically, he called them “the most terrible and poignant affliction (a traveler) can be called upon to bear…Language is simply unable to portray the misery and annoyance accompanying their presence.”
This was in 1880, back before bug spray.
“They prayed for winter in those days,” DF observes.
He’s had his share of fearsome blooduscker encounters, having spent his formative years doing the Bush wave in places like Quinhagak and Togiak. As an adult he and a relative went car-camping up the Haul Road, toward the North Slope. They wore hooded kuspuks with drawstrings pulled so tightly only their eyes and noses were visible, and constantly wiped mosquitoes off those exposed areas.
Here’s what they’d do in order to get to sleep at night:
- Open the driver’s side window a crack.
- Spray one of those Raid Yard Guard products until the interior of the car was like London after midnight.
- Watch mosquitoes flee out the window crack.
- Roll the window up, stretch out and get as much as shuteye as was possible/necessary in a 24-hour-daylight situation.
But wasn’t that, um, toxic to humans? Maybe, but not nearly as much as the 100% DEET they’d been rubbing on their skin during this trip. “It makes your food taste funny and your lips go numb,” he says now, “but it keeps the mosquitoes away.”
Good times!
‘A dreadful plague’
DEET is no joke, having been linked to adverse health effects ranging from insomnia to convulsions and even death. Even so, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people. Some Alaskans practically drink the stuff.
Others prefer natural repellents such as chamomile tea, fresh parlsey or vinegar rubbed on the skin, or concoctions of eucalyptus, cedarwood or pennyroyal. One naturopath I interviewed years ago reported that taking garlic capsules helped. (Hey, it works on larger vampires.)
The only sure way to avoid mosquito bites? Leave Alaska until freeze-up. Failing that, you can use whatever works: citronella candles, bug spray, headnets, DEET cocktails.
Yes, I know that mosquitoes are bad in places like Texas, Florida, Louisiana and just about any swampy place. (Not that they need bogs to breed. Mosquitoes can reproduce in the small amount of water in the saucer under a houseplant.)
But despite recent reports about the giant “feather-legged gallinipper” mosquito – which turned out to be mostly hype and hysteria – I’d bet that they’re worse here than just about anywhere else. We know how Edward Adams felt back in 1851 when he wrote that “everywhere the mosquitoes are a dreadful plague, about the marshes they completely fill the air.”
Adams was in St. Michael’s, Alaska, at the time, one of many British guys sent to the Arctic to look for the supremely lost Sir John Franklin. Franklin was good and dead by then. As far as we know, mosquitoes did not kill him.
Update: It’s really not my imagination. See “Mosquito invasion in Southcentral Alaska leads to run on supplies,” in the Anchorage Daily News.
Related reading:
- Sour flies, greenheads and ticks: Bug-eyed in South Jersey
- Cold is relative
- Breaking up is hard to do
When I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, a mosquito bite was a novelty because pollution had ruined all their breeding places. Parents would sit outside on their porches till well after dark, the kids would run around and play, and almost nobody every got bitten. Sweet memories… To this day, I’m still surprised that I can’t sit on my deck in Massachusetts once twilight falls because we’ll get eaten alive by the bugs.
Funny! And, sadly, true — love the quotes. I’m from Northern Michigan, and I suspect some of the same skeeter species live both places. Have lived in the South (FL and GA) for a long time now, but although the bloodsuckers down here are numerous they are nowhere near as FIERCE as the northern ones. Comes down to having only a few weeks to bite-and-breed versus all year long, I guess.
Hahaha! I hadn’t thought about it before, but this is totally true.
Also being from MA, I agree with Kate. We burn citronella all over the deck to try to keep them away. Everybody gets happy when the bats come out to have their dinner!
MAN….It still takes a while to get your mind around mosquitoes in Alaska. My “Dear Uncle” told me about these skeeter when he was up their in the 60’s…at first I thought it was an “urban legend”…but he swore it was gospel..One would think that as cold as it gets in Alaska, there would be no surviving bugs. Is there a problem with ticks as well? In this neck of the woods …the dreaded “deer tick” is coming into it’s own AND they basically carry every ailment known to mankind…
No ticks, thank goodness. When I was a kid there wasn’t any kind of issue with ticks. It was a fact of life that your mom would check your head after you’d played outdoors all day. Now the stakes have been raised, considerably. My dad’s property is crawling with deer so when we’re down there with my niece’s kids in July we’ll have to spray them with skeeter-and-tick dope.
I’m from Texas, lived in Lousiana, and now reside in Georgia, so I’ve dealt with my fair share of mosquitoes. And I agree .. the year I spent in Alaska taught me that Alaska mosquitoes can give all three states combined a run for their money. 🙂
One of the few thins I DON’T miss about living in Anchorage. The others being the length of the cold of winter, the constant freeze/thaw cycles, and the length of dark days in winter.
But the scenery, the people . . . how I miss Alaska!
Come on back for a visit…The DEET is on!
I thought it couldn’t get worse than Thailand at dusk, where I accumulated about 50 bites in a 1.5 hour dinner, but apparently so! Now you’re making me rethink the wisdom of visiting Alaska in the unwinter months 🙂
50 bites…ouch. No DEET for you, I guess?
And come on up anyway. We’ll light extra citronella candles just for you. 🙂
I remember sitting in a hot tub (ok, it was a tote from the cannery, filled with hot water, but it was a luxury!) for about an hour one evening. The only part of my body that was exposed was my face – and I was covered with so many bites that I couldn’t see where one ended and another began. I learned my lesson. Bug spray, even when in the water – and lots of it.
Never had a problem with mosquitoes when I was growing up in Fairbanks in the 50s! The Air Force would fly about treetop altitude, low and slow, spraying clouds of DDT. I have a mental photograph of the stuff coming out of the end of an old DC-6. Good times! 🙂
I can tolerate heat, not just mosquitoes. I hate them.
Mosquitoes love me. I will have a swollen area about three inches across from one bite. I get ill, really sick. We have Tiger Mosquitoes from Japan, not wiry like other mosquitoes, but black and tough little sturdy bodies. My friend though spiders were biting her because she had never seen mosquitoes like these. However, Alaska mosquitoes frighten me from what you have said.
LOL! When SDXB and I were in Georgia, the locals assured us that Avon Skin-So-Soft would repel mosquitoes and the hideous biting flies that rule the woods there. According to Snopes.com, its repellent quality lasts all of 9.6 minutes.
We have the cicadas. There are places where they are so LOUD that it sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. I can’t even spell what it sounds like.
I remember that noise from when I was a kid in a rural area. It really is loud.
The dirty little suckers are bad here in IL. And it doesn’t help that there are quite a few houses in foreclosure that aren’t being mowed. I feel your pain-literally.