On Jun 30, 11:25 am, belly wrote:
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:03:16 -0700 in
. com, James
graced the world with this thought:

Misquitoes love my shady yard. Would a bug zapper kill more than it
attracts? I'm tired of applying OFF just to go out for a few minutes.

You may want to investigate and find out why they love your yard.
Look for standing water on your property--but look for it around your
immediate neighbors, too.
Don't know how the laws are in your area, but here in the SF Bay Area,
if a neighbor won't comply with requests to take care of standing
water on their property, most counties will come in and handle it for
them whether they like it or not.
Also, in my county, we have a department called "vector control," who
will come to your house and tell you what needs to be done to fix
problems with rats, mice, mosquitos, and other disease bearing
animals. They don't fix the situation, but they advise you what to do.
You may have something like that where you live.

As I said they love the shade and dense vegetation. You don't need
standing water to attract them. For example I had 2 huge arborvitae
by the front door. They were mosquito magnets. After I trimmed them
down and it got more light and airy, there were not as many mosquitoes
by the front door.

The vegetation also attracts animals. My back yard is an animal
crossing frequented by squirrels, raccoons, opossums, cottontails, box
turtles. Thinning the evergreens might have reduced the bird
population nesting here. Used to have lots of baby birds every year.
Also getting a cat that's an excellent climber probably made many
nesting sites less attractive.