I know they’re hungry. But why me, when my husband and son (a tender, juicy, 10-year-old) are sitting right here on the same patio?
These pests have always eaten me in preference to anyone else who was around. Why, why, why?
(And to those who might be near me who think my perfume smells like bug spray, that’s because it is bug spray. But if I’ve missed a quarter inch of skin somewhere, that’s where the suckers will land.)
I have no answer to your question.
But I am in the same boat as you. Those sons of Satan always go for me first, foremost, and always.
I have absolutely no idea why, but I do sympathize.
Cut out the fabric softener, perfumes, hairspray…anything scented.
Go unscented in everything! (This alone will help you out by 90%)
Cut back on the sugar in your diet.
Take Brewer’s yeast pills. They help repel mosquitos by putting a layer of whatever over your skin. ( the marines use this stuff.)
I live across the street from a protected wet land and had to adapt or drown myself in DEET ( which is nasty, nasty stuff.) I haven’t bought mosquito spray in years.
I rarely am bitten by skeeters and outside every day in the summer.
It’s been documented that some people give off smells that attract the buggers, and others don’t, or, in fact, actually repel them. There’s a lot of research going on to figure out exactly what chemicals they respond to. Well, of course, “a lot” is relative when it comes to the mosquito research field.
I don’t care.
GET THEM OFF ME!!!
:mad: :mad:
I, too, am a walking feast for the nasty little biters. My dad once read an article that said that blood types and Rh factor influenced who got bit more, but the last time I posted that here the theory got shot down, so now I’ve got nothing. Oh, I’m B negative, for the record.
And for heaven’s sake, stop dousing yourself in BBQ sauce! What, were you raised by cannibals? 
(ahem)
I find that when I eat less sugar (and thus have less sugar in my sweat), bugs are more likely to leave me alone.
They want your blood, not your flesh.
Not do be indelicate, but do you eat a lot fatty, meatty foods? Sometimes folks who do and/or have the right metabolism (especially if you’re diabetic) produce an abundance of ketones, especially acetone, and disulfides (product of meat protein breakdown by bacteria in the gut), which draws mosquitoes like…er…flies. I think lactate is also an attractant. Anyhoo, if you feel especially singled-out by the little bastards, you probably smell really good to them. Again, some people just aren’t lucky in the scent department and make more of the chemicals mosquitoes like than other folks. But sometimes altering diet can change the way you smell pretty dramatically, and that might make you a less attracitive meal.
My mom and I are both huge mosquito attractors. I get everything unscented - not for the mosquitos, just because I don’t want to smell like things. I don’t eat bananas (they used to say mosquitos liked them - I just don’t like bananas, I think they’re gross) and I eat a good diet. So does my mom. We just taste like mosquito ambrosia.
Every time I go out into my yard I spray myself with mosquito repellant. And every time I come inside, I’ve got a new bite (or ten). Last time I went out I made sure to spray very thoroughly.
So they bit me on the side of my palm and my chin 
My dad, that bastard, NEVER gets bitten. Could be that he’s O+ and I am A- blood type (as per kittenblue’s dad). Ironic that he ended up contracting malaria in Vietnam, though. Maybe once they give you malaria, you’re off the hook with them? 
When I still had my pugs, I noticed that one of the three almost never had any fleas on her, while the other two would have dozens. I used to tell the flea-less one that she was such a tough little customer that the fleas would bend their beaks on her and select the others as being more tender. Maybe those of us who are more attractive to bugs have thinner skins.
Well, I’m O+, so that theory is blown to hell–I count 12 bites on my legs alone. True, I have been gardening at dusk, but that’s when it’s cooler out.
I don’t eat alot of meat–and not much red meat at all. I do like chocolate, but if you think I am giving up chocolate for prevention of skeeter bites, you’re nuts.
I think there must be something in our sweat, which is undetectable by our poor noses.
Damned predators. My mom never gets bit–and she eats as many sweets as I do!
Meh. I think “nasty, nasty stuff” overstates the case considerably. Some people do seem to have bad reactions to it (particularly young female children), but considering the amount that is used by millions of people over the course of a summer and the low number of adverse reactions, I’d say the risk is mighty low, particularly compared to other environmental toxins.
(I did a bit of web browsing and most of the DEET-is-bad cites seemed to have an agenda and did their best to stretch some published research to their most alarming possible conclusions.) I think caution is advised when using DEET, and the advice to spray it on clothing seems sound, but it’s not going to actively dissolve your flesh or cause your kids to mutate into supervilliains.
Yeah, I try to put DEET all around me but not on me… clothing, hair, ballcap, beard, etc.
I’ve heard that a diet rich in garlic helps repel them, so that may be worth a try. If nothing else, at least you get to have a diet rich in garlic.
Normally I’d care about smearing myself with a chemical that can eat nylon straps away before my very eyes, but there are worse things. Far, far worse. You spend a little time in the northern wilderness of Maine in the late spring/early summer, and you will experience insect affliction on par with a Biblical Plague. The only place on Earth I’ve visited that was worse than the black flies and mosquitoes up there were stretches of the Dusky Track in Fiordland, New Zealand, where the sandfly swarms could lift small children off the ground and suck them dry before they dropped. A man with an OCD-level aversion to potential toxins will gladly bathe in vats of DEET rather than suffer the monster swarms of biting, bloodthirsty vermin that infest the boreal and temperate rain forests of this world.
My only comment here… as an avid angler, DEET is not allowed anywhere near my house, cars or boats… When researching repellants, I found a study that more/less proved that DEET was one (if not the only) chemical proven to repel fish from biting (specifically bass).
First hand knowledge (before I did the research, but based on an actual fishing experience) seemed to validate that claim.
We use Avon’s “Bug Gaurd” products, and they seem to do ok by us… add in the sunscreen stuff and you’re good to go.
same used to happen to my wife, skeeters would feast merrily on her and leave me and the sprog alone 
Yes, DEET is a plasticizer. But then again, you drink equally potent solvents every time you down a martini. Or even a Dasani.
(But yes, I put my watch in my pocket before I spray DEET on myself.)
Mosquitoes are attracted to heat, to movement, to CO2, and to certain kinds of smell.
If you are the warmest thing around, the least still thing around, the thing emitting the most CO2, or if you have high levels of steroids in your sweat, they will like you.
They always liked me best until the New and Improved model showed up, now they like my eldest child best.
Seriously, I used to have to sit at the end of the picnic table to draw off mosquitoes.
Daughters of Satan. Male mosquitos don’t feed on blood, only females.