Yep, when I moved to Louisiana, I was always thrilled to hear the mosquito truck coming down the street. “Quick! Close the windows! Here comes The Truck!”
I should have been horrified at the very idea, but I am a bug magnet. I think I had at least one bite, if not a bunch (Six in 30 minutes? That ain’t nothin’!) for the two years I was near New Orleans. Continuously. Somewhere on my body I was always itching. Little bastards.
Internet Legend, great minds think alike! (And so do ours). I did go to the town’s website, and they do have a mosquito control program. They do it to allay the fears of West Nile, since there has been, what, FIVE cases of West Nile in all of NYS in the last five years, so let’s allocate a ton of resources, but whatever the reason is, they do do it.
How about Thermacell Mosquito stuff? Anybody heard of it?
Ok, everybody, so I am a big wimp and 6 bites isn’t anything! But it’s MY blood and I don’t want to give it up and you’d hate them too if you’d had malaria.
Here in Minnesota, we have lots of mosquitos (10,000+ lakes will do that). We have a Metropolitan Mosquito Control District that works to deal with them.
They concentrate mainly on the long term reduction, by eliminating them before they become (biting) adults. They mainly use anti-larval treatments like Bacillus thuringiensis (a soil bacteria that messes up their digestion) or Methoprene (an insect growth regulator which prevents them from maturing into adults). The first is available in granules like lawn fertilizer, the second looks like charcoal briquettes which you can put near or in water.
But those are mainly to prevent the next crop of mosquitos, you may not want to spend money on them for rented property.
That’s too late for your current problem, all you can do now is apply ‘barrier’ products to discourage them from coming from the creek onto your lawn, or discourage them from landing on your body. Pyrethroids are used for the first, DEET for the second.
You might also check around your house–last summer I realized I was getting a ton of mosquito bites inside the house, and tracked it down to a couple of unused dog water dishes under the back porch that were serving as hatcheries, the offspring coming right into the house under the back screen door. Got rid of the dog dishes and the skeeters went away.
Moral of story: skeeters can breed in surprisingly small amounts of water. Walk around your yard and have a look.
This here is why I live in the PNW and not in Texas any more. 
Although to be fair, last time I went back things had improved due to my parents’ running a CO2 bug machine in the afternoon. Plus probably the changes in my diet made me less tasty. Used to be I’d be one giant bug bite in the summers growing up – should’ve owned stock in cortisone companies. 
This isn’t going to help the OP, but I lessened the amount of skeeters considerably when I bought a few larvae-eating fish and released them into my little garden pond.
DEET is worthless against the mosquitos around here - they treat it like catsup. The only thing I’ve found that works against everything from mosquitos to blackflies to deerflies is called Skeeter Shoo. It’s a yellow oil that smells like citronella x1,000,000. Repells everything capable of moving out of the way (even people). Be aware, It does stain clothing.
The BT mosquito dunks work great to keep them from breeding in standing water. They’re a natural bacteria that is completely safe to use. Just toss them in the water. and they’ll kill the larvae.
The idea of DEET is that it’s supposed to make you invisible to mosquitoes, not repel them. If it’s not applied correctly then it won’t work.
How does one apply it incorrectly?
You have to thoroughly evenly apply a thin layer to every inch of exposed skin except for lips and eyes. If you wear loose sleeves, pant legs and collars then you should wear garments you don’t care too much about (DEET can ruin certain fabrics) and apply DEET to your skin under the sleeve/collar as well. Reapply in the same fashion every couple of hours. At least that’s been my experience with DEET (I’m not a DEET expert).
For the long term, maybe you could set up a bat house. A colony of small brown bats is a fearsome destroyer of mosquitoes…a single bat can eat 600 mosquitoes in an hour.
Here’s a nontoxic mosquito control plan for New York, of all the things to blunder across while googling: non-toxic NY control plan
Sailboat
You can try some of those expensive Bug Off clothes or the DEET soaked wrist and ankle things. I’ve owned some, but have not been able to judge how effectively they work.
Plug in vapor based (not sound based) units are very effective. Are they available in the US?
I find the Burt’s Bees natural repellent to be moderately effective. It does not prevent 100% of bites, but it does moderate things a bit, and it seems a lot safer and user friendly than traditional bug sprays.
This is pretty much what I was going to say. In the old days in Africa they would spend a lot of effort tidying and straightening slow-moving streams, draining pools, and treating every body of water (including tiny puddles caught in the stems of plants, in hollows on logs/fenceposts, gutters, etc. with a little bit of paraffin-soaked sawdust). Most mosquitoes don’t fly particularly far, but many can breed in an upturned bottle cap. Your biggest problem is most likely the creek, but if there are lots breeding there the chances are they are also breeding elswhere around your property.
I suspect the paraffin might be a bit environmentally unfriendly these days, and if the creek is very slow-moving you are SOL, but the best ways of controlling mosquitoes are:
[ul]
[li]Get rid of any still water to prevent larvae[/li][li]Put something in any still water to eat the larvae[/li][li]Use a detergent or oil on any still water to mess up the surface tension and drown the larvae[/li][/ul]
Any chance of getting the creek tidied up?
BT, bacillus thurengiensis is the thing for area of standing water you can’t get rid of. There may be little muck pools at the edges of your stream, for example. BT won’t hurt you, your pets, or the fish in the stream, but it kills insect larvae.
Most folks will prowl the grounds, looking for standing water, but they forget the rain gutters. Even the best-built gutters will have a few puddles. Some people use lengths of ridged flexible drain tubing to take the water from downspout to farther away. After the rain, every ridge in the tube is a little pool full of skeeter larvae. Use smooth, hard tubing for that.
Mosquitoes, for all their seeming skills, have serious limitations. They don’t see well, so swatting them is fairly easy. Their habit of seeking warmth fools them into unproductive behavior. In the late afternoon, you’ll find hundreds of them bouncing stupidly on the south and west walls of your house. If you enjoy killing them, that’s a good hunting spot. They are very light and spindly, so they don’t fly well at all in a good breeze. As Full Metal Lotus said, a big fan is sometimes all you need to keep them off you.
Mosquitos feed on plant sap until they are ready to lay eggs, so it helps to keep your grass mowed, and do the weed-eating thing around posts and such.
A bat house is probably your best defense, along with swallows and other small birds. I’ve found that lots of the bat house plans on the internet are overly complex and refined – bats will still use simpler, more affordable, and less obtrusive roosts. A couple boards nailed together with a 1" gap, and secured to your soffit, will work just fine. The little buggers aren’t all that picky in the wild.
People, I positively love the idea, but I cannot put in a bat house. Remember, I rent. Also I can’t do anything about the creek…that’s not even part of the property I “rent”. Besides, I like it - I just don’t like that it breeds mosquitoes.
We seem to be having some good success with the Thermacell stuff. I will continue using it and let you know how it goes.
Just an FYI, rubbing a little bit of spit on a mosquito bite will help relieve the itching. Most bites don’t itch for more than 15 minutes or so (so long as you don’t scratch it very hard & you don’t have an allergy), and I’ve used this method since I was really young.
Too much poison for too long can lead to immunity making the mosquitos nigh unkillable. Plus it’s bad for the birdies.
Mika, what you need is a mechanical mosquito deterrent. Something that will closely monitor your immediate vicinity and kill the little buggers the instant they come into contact with you with a quick and sharp blow. Something like … me.
slap "No really, I was killing a mosquito! There’s another one. " slap “and another!” swat …
Or CIWS!
Are you Greek?, Are you trying to marry off any daughters?
Old tires are the best skeeder incubators made by man! do make sure there are none around.
We are having a bad year(high water everywhere), but we can now look forward to
next with the hope of low water meaning low skeeder numbers.
I will have to try the dry ice trick next time I got to Mosquito central (lake cabin).