Permethrins are serious allergens and they can wreak enough havoc with the immune system to make you allergic to other things.
The natives of India taught this former Florida gal one other thing: you, sir, need curry, in quantity. Go for a good Madras blend with fenugreek seed and add industrial quantities of garlic. Five big cloves is good for two people. The garlic, fenugreek, and other spices are taken up in body odor and jam the skeeters’ olfactory sense.
I once had the pleasant experience of negotiating with two N FL police officers outside for a couple hours about the attempted theft of a car I owned. The last question they asked was “Why are the mosquitoes leaving you two alone and eating us alive?” Ship in the spices from an Indian grocer by mail.
Sunbeam used to make small ultrasonic devices that would keep a badly weatherstripped camper/tent free of skeeters except in the Mississippi River valley, where they are overwhelming and competition for our blood is intense.
Interesting experience with lemon eucalyptus (or is that Lemon Eucalyptus?) this weekend at the Oregon Country Fair.
I had put it on my arms and legs, etc. plus sprayed some on my hands and then applied it on my ears. Much later, I went to switch from glasses to sunglasses, and put the temple (the thing that goes over your ear) in my mouth while I swapped.
You can probably guess where it goes from there.
But if you can’t, my lips and inside my mouth started to burn. I felt like I had chapped lips and had burned inside my mouth on a hot drink for several days.
super deadly to fish as well. seems fairly safe for mammals at reasonable exposure levels.
They sell bear pepper spray here and bear bells, we have a ton of black bears and grizzly.
The old joke in any area with bears is how can you tell black bear scat from grizzly scat?
“One is full of berry seeds and the other smells like hot peppers and is full of bells.”
Can confirm. I use thermocell hand-held units when turkey hunting in late May. I’m going to try using permethrin on my clothing when scouting deer bedding areas in long grasses through the summers now that deer ticks are becoming a real problem here in SW Ontario.
If you’re spraying your clothes, you should look at a permethrin clothes spray. It’s similar to allethrin, works better than DEET, and is in general less harmful to people than DEET is.
