BK Mosquitoes Got the West Nile

via Brooklyn Heights Press

Oh, hey everyone. You can stop worrying about bed bugs now -- they're not nearly as bad as the WEST NILE-LADEN MOSQUITOES buzzing around Brooklyn these days.

Yep: Brooklyn's many-legged population has upped the do-not-want ante. Last Thursday, the DOH let it be known that some of our borough's buzziest got something extra-special inside -- a nice, steamy  serving of potentially brain-damaging West Nile! The department found the virus in 'skeeters roaming Bay Ridge and other BK locales.

State Senator  Martin Golden asked the city to, like, IMMEDIATELY fling poison in the air to take care of this ish. But the nerds over at the DOH were all like, "Meh. We need to do more SCIENCE first. Meh." Having found a few cases of West Nile during routine testing, the DOH says we should be fine wearing long sleeves, avoiding dusk and dawn (aka, the mosquito-ing hours), and tipping over the standing-water pools where mosquitoes like to fuck. The city will keep testing to see how much of this stuff is out there.

So. No extra poison flinging YET. Anyway, as you might remember, they already sprayed the air with bug death just a few weeks ago, including in our fair 'hood -- to the chagrin of people who had no idea their evening park stroll was taking them through clouds of (mild?) carcinogen. If and when the city sprays again, we'll get a helpful 24-hour notice, presumably spread mostly via Twitter. If it becomes a trending topic, you might even not let your dog out to snuff the airborne pesticide.

West Nile, if you don't know, is a virus that usually does pretty much nothing. Like bad breath, most people affected don't know they have it. Occasionally, it'll feel like the flu. But, in rare and pant-shittingly scary cases, it gets all ambitious and gives the elderly, those with weakened immune systems, and sometimes children, encephalitis or meningitis. I once met a guy (older guy) who said the virus had him walking into furniture and driving up on curbs for a week before knocking him down with an ass-kicking fever. So, that can happen.

But the anti-mosquito pesticides might possibly give you liver cancer. Awesome. So, pick your poison, sotospeak. The DOH has a page with advice on taking on 'squitoes yourself, including avoiding times when the bugs are out "searching for a blood meal." Which I think is a weirdly awesome way of putting it. No more spraying announced, as of yet, though. We'll be sure to let you know when people start bitching about the city spraying or as they continue to bitch about the city not spraying.