“Fight the Bite” Mosquito Calender

The “A-B-Cs of Bites” storybook

“Ricky Beats the Birthday Bites” storybook

http://www.allenwayne.com/skeeter/

Also for more information on Mosquito Control please go to www.TuxedoMosquitoControl.com

One reason to establish a monthly dosing schedule is that pet owners are likely to forget to resume medication after taking a break. Skipping doses when mosquitoes are most active can endanger the life of your pet.

“Another reason to continue the heartworm preventatives is that keeping the protective blood level up also safeguards pets against common parasites that can be spread to humans,” says Dr. Tom Staudacher of Naperville Animal Hospital.

“A common misconception is that we don’t have heartworm disease in this climate, but we do see multiple cases each year,” Dr. Staudacher says.

This is why your pet’s annual veterinary exam includes a blood test to detect the presence of Dirofilaria immitis, or heartworms. Only transmitted by mosquitoes, the larvae can reside in the heart, lungs and blood vessels of their hosts. The blood test can identify heartworms only after they’ve been present for at least six months and have matured into adults. Should your pet’s blood test come back positive, then veterinarians like Dr. Staudacher typically recommend chest X-rays or electrocardiograms (EKG) to determine how widespread the infection is and the number of worms present.

At the onset of the disease, most dogs show no symptoms. As the disease develops, symptoms progress from a cough to intolerance to exercise, to abnormal lung sounds, to the retention of fluid in the abdomen. If untreated, it can be fatal.

Fortunately, most dogs diagnosed with heartworm disease can be treated successfully. While cats don’t contract heartworm disease as often as dogs, they should still receive preventative medication because there isn’t an all-encompassing treatment for feline heartworm disease.

The type and length of treatment depends on how advanced the disease is. Most dogs undergo a two-stage treatment with an adulticide to eradicate adult worms, followed by another injection that destroys the larvae. Dogs are prohibited from exercising during treatment because the remnants of dead worms can cause blockage in the animal’s cardiovascular or pulmonary systems.

At NAHS, all dogs ages six months and older are tested for heartworms. If they test negative, they receive a monthly preventative, such as Heartgard Plus. When dogs test positive for heartworms, they are taken to a local veterinarian, such as Naperville Animal Hospital, for a series of injections. After the second treatment, the dogs undergo additional tests, and may even receive another injection depending on the severity of the disease. This process takes about six months and is often an added responsibility of the person who adopts the infected dog. NAHS covers the cost of the treatment until the dog is free of heartworms.

Each year NAHS provides heartworm treatment for between five and 12 dogs. Now available for adoption, Finn, a spaniel mix, and Foster, a cattle dog mix, are responding well to heartworm treatment.

We at NAHS urge you to regularly provide a year-round dose of heartworm preventative pills — they even come in a tasty chewable version — throughout the life of your pet. Some veterinarians like Naperville Animal Hospital even offer Pet Wellness plans that offer savings on preventative medicines, vaccines and annual tests. An ounce of prevention goes a long way to ensure that your pet has a healthy life and saves you money in the long run.

Naperville Area Humane Society is a private, not-for-profit organization founded in 1979 to develop and implement animal welfare programs and services within Naperville and surrounding communities. NAHS’ goal is to protect animals and to prevent animal suffering.

Angie Wood is executive director of the Naperville Area Humane Society. Contact her at 630-420-8989.

For Additional on Mosquito Control www.TuxedoMosquitoControl.com

Can a spider be a scapegoat? That certainly seems to be the case for the brown recluse spider, at least in Georgia and other states of the Deep South. Blamed for numbers of injuries way out of proportion to its presence here, and with a bite far less severe than supposed, this little fellow—about the size of a quarter when its legs are extended—suffers not only from mistaken identity but also from a general arachnophobia that presumes even non-bites to be spider-derived.

Thus while many Georgia doctors have diagnosed a patient’s wound as a brown recluse spider bite, over the past six years only 19 brown recluse spiders—that’s 19 individuals—have been identified in the state, said Nancy Hinkle, an entomologist in UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Throughout the state’s recorded history, brown recluse spiders have been collected a total of only 58 times in Georgia.

From 2002 to 2008, Hinkle tracked brown recluse reports in Georgia. She published the study’s findings, which basically give the brown recluse spider a major reprieve, in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology. “Hundreds of entomologists, extension agents from across the state, thousands of pest control inspectors, and millions of citizens have been able to find brown recluse spiders in only 31 Georgia counties,” she said.

Thus unless the few brown recluse spiders in the state are incredible workaholics moving at super-speed, their bites are actually quite rare in Georgia. Hinkle said there is only one confirmed account of anyone being bitten by a brown recluse spider in the state. Yet 963 reports of their bites in 103 counties have been filed at Georgia poison centers over the last five years.

The Southern House Spider, common throughout the state, is often mistaken for a Brown Recluse.

Misdiagnosis is also a problem elsewhere in the region. Hinkle said South Carolina physicians diagnosed 738 bites in 2004, but only 44 brown recluse spiders have been found there in the state’s history. Similarly, Floridians claimed 95 brown recluse bites in 2000, but Florida has recorded brown recluse spiders at only 11 places in more than 100 years.

Hinkle’s study was prompted by her arrival from California. “When I first came to Georgia I heard several people say they knew someone who’d seen or been seriously wounded by a recluse,” she said, “but I found that odd. The recluse is a Midwesterner, not a Southerner.”

Hinkle hopes that the study will educate Georgia’s medical community and reduce the number of erroneous recluse bite diagnoses, as a mark on the skin that looks like a spider bite could be something more serious. In fact, she believes that many assumed brown recluse bites could be methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)—a type of staph infection resistant to antibiotics such as penicillin, amoxicillin, and oxacillin. MRSA causes mild skin infections that result in pimples or boils, but it can also produce more serious skin lesions or infect surgical wounds.

Incorrectly diagnosing MRSA as a spider bite, or vice versa, can result in a patient getting the wrong therapy, Hinkle observes. “MRSA infections require a specific set of antibiotics,” she said. “Brown recluse spider bites, on the other hand, cause tissue damage through salivary secretions in their venom, and antibiotics have no effect on salivary secretions.”

Other wounds diagnosed as spider bites could actually be infections, diabetes, bed sores, Lyme disease, anthrax, or necrotizing bacteria, among other problems, some of which can be fatal if not treated fast, she said.

On the rare occasion when someone suffers a bite from a brown recluse spider, it will likely heal without medical intervention, according to Hinkle. And despite all the horror stories, only one percent of such cases require medical attention.

Brown recluse spiders aren’t vicious and are not looking to bite people, said Rick Vetter, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, and the U.S. expert on these critters. Consider, for example, a Kansas family that collected more than 2,000 brown recluses from their home in six months. “They’ve been living there for eight years and still have shown no evidence of a single bite,” he said.

In any case, “just being brown does not make a spider a brown recluse,” said Hinkle. “Most spiders are brown because it’s a good camouflage color. And recluses are reclusive; so if you see a spider, it’s probably not a recluse.”

Hinkle said that of the more than 2,000 samples submitted for the study the most common was the Southern House Spider, the spider most commonly mistaken for a brown recluse. “It is also the most common spider found in Georgia homes,” she said.

Sharing your home with spiders may not actually be such a bad thing. They are harmless to humans and provide biological control of many home-invading pests such as centipedes, cockroaches, and ants. Still, some arachnophobes may rather the spiders move out.

“If you are concerned about having spiders in your home, the solution is to starve them out,” Hinkle said. “Obviously, there are enough insects getting inside the structure to feed the spiders. If you seal up all the cracks through which these insects are entering, the spiders can’t survive.”

April 17, 2010 – Just an FYI, We already have a West Nile case in Metro Atlanta some 2 – 3 months earlier than we usually see cases. With the wet winter and warm spring, the mosquito populations have gotten an early start, and both nuisance and vector species are likely to be a real problem.