How to get rid of mosquitoes

There are several mosquitoes in my house. I assume they came in when I fell asleep with the sliding glass door open left it open one night several days ago, but however they’re here they were certainly not invited. When one flew away before I could take a picture of him perched on my Alexander the Great bust they officially wore out their welcome.
Is there any way to get rid of mosquitoes from inside the house? I don’t want to set off a bomb if possible because I have a dog and he hates kennels even for a day, and the place isn’t swarming with them- I just see one or two per day.

Swatting them works pretty well. If you only have a handful in the house, then I don’t see that more drastic means are called for.

One of the other ops around here mentions that bats kill mosquitos, but so do purple martins, and a host of other birds. There are many ways to attract purple martins to the place, you can buy purple martin houses and put them up around your place.

Each purple martin has to eat like 1000 bugs a day to stay alive, so having just a few of these around impacts the bug population around your place drastically.

Just let the mosquitoes gorge themselves until they die from overeating!
More seriously, you just have to find them perched somewhere and then swat them. In the meantime, wear some mosquito repellent to keep them off of you.

My next-door neighborhood brought me this folk wisdom last year from the community around the Canadian lake where she has a summer place:

Put a few drops of lemon-scented dishwashing liquid (she swears by ‘Joy’ brand), on a white dinner plate, and leave it where mosquitoes are. Apparently the combination of the lemon scent and the whiteness of the plate attract the mosquitoes, which die shortly after imbibing. I don’t know that she’s used this arrangement indoors, but I can’t guess why it wouldn’t work indoors as well as out. Good luck – skeeters buzzing around your ears can be a maddening curse, especially when you’re trying to get to sleep!

Er, ‘neighborhood’ should have been ‘neighbor’, of course.

The dishwashing liquid trick has been conclusively debunked as totally non-effective. A quick snopes will back me up.

Likewise, the idea that purple martens eat mosquitos has also been thoroughly debunked. I found that while researching those propane mosquito repellents. Some well-known natrualtist made an unsubstantiated claim 75 years ago, then he got quoted by a couple of other authorities, and erever since everybody has been quoting everybody else and it became the truth. But there was, and is today, zero evidence to back it up.
The way to kill mosquitos in the house is to spray or swat them. Take your pick.

I enjoy capturing them and then pulling them apart piece by piece; it’s so satifsying to get even after they’ve used me as bug-lunch all these hundreds of times.

[QUOTE=Ficer67]
One of the other ops around here mentions that bats kill mosquitosQUOTE]

I prefer tee ball bats, they do less damage to the furniture. :smiley:

Check out the “Mosquito Magnet” at Home Depot, etc.
It is alleged to be THE answers to mosquito complaints.
This may be overkill for just a few indoors, however.

I’m not sure how easily you can get one of these in the West, but here in the malaria-belt they are the most blessed device. Basically it’s like an electrified tennis racket; all you have to do is get close and the mosquito is gone. No sprays or chemicals and no stains on the wall.

We use these.

I have one of those (they made it to my local hardware store last year). Truth to tell, they aren’t very useful for preventing of mosquito bites because you have to see the skeeter before it sees you. They are very useful, however, for getting revenge on the skeeters, because that pop snap sound is very satisfying. Also good for killing those darned winter flies that get in the house in December.

I’ve been researching mozzies recently, trip to a malerial zone coming up. Here’s a summary of what I found out.

Mosquito “repellants” such as DEET usually don’t actually repel mosquitoes - they interfere with their senses so that they can’t find or bite you. Almost none of them will function to exclude mosquitoes from a space. You could use DEET to stop yourself from being bitten and wait for them to die of old age, but it won’t drive them out of the house.

What you’re looking for is called a “knockdown” agent - an insecticide spray that kills the mosquitoes while being non-toxic to people and dogs.

The perfect, long lasting, safe-for-humans-and-animals if used correctly, mosquito knockdown agent is DDT. Not a chance of getting hold of any and even if you could you’re not allowed to use it.

Alternatives to DDT include permethrin, which is apparently an effective knockdown agent. Some details on permethrin (and lots of other stuff) here:

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/128/11/931

And a commercial product here:

http://bugsource.com/permethrin_13_3_one_gallon_.html
There are commercial effective mosquito traps. They aren’t cheap. Zappers aren’t very good at killing mosquitoes, although they do get the flies.

http://www.home-mosquito-control.com/mosquito-control.php
http://www.home-mosquito-control.com/compare-mosquito-control-traps.php
A comparatively recent development has been the use of catnip oil, which was proven to be more effect than DEET in some trials (although the test conditions were very contrived IMO.) You might try it anyway - this abstract makes a passing reference to it being a “spatial repellant” against some species of mosquito:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=158336

Personally, I think your best bet would be to hunt the little bastards down. They’re hard to swat - they pull that vanishing act when you swing at them, but a fogger with soapy water will drop them and you can then mash them. Hairspray is very effective at dropping any winged insect as well.

If you’re swatting them, wait until they’re near a surface - a wall or table, then swing. You’ll probably miss and the mosquito will vanish, BUT she’s still there, probably only a foot away! They zip to the nearest surface and then stay very still, waiting for you to wander off. That’s when you mash them against their refuge. Very satisfying.