My wife and I have lived here for more than 15 years now, and while the list of things we love about the area is long, one of the things that still most pleases us is the almost complete lack of flying pests in San Diego.
We both grew-up in Middle America, where you spend half the year swatting mosquitoes, and killing flies (and the other half scraping ice off your car).
Here, those pesky bugs are about as rare as the ice.
That’s because those nuisance insects breed in stagnant fresh water, which pretty much doesn’t exist here in the high desert. If you find standing water at all, it’s usually either saltwater, or chlorinated swimming pool water, neither of which is suitable for them to reproduce.
I’d lived here before, so I knew what to expect, but when I brought my wife out for the first time, and explained we can leave the screens open year-round, she was thrilled.
We do Have Plenty of Harmless Lizards, Though
Well, there was one time we woke-up to find a lizard in the living room, but other than that, you really can leave the screens open (fortunately, Polly likes lizards).
Western Fence Lizards are really common here, and totally harmless.
In fact, they prefer to feast on really annoying pests, and tend to reduce the occurrence of Lyme disease in the areas they inhabit.
Strangely, we have had one pesky fly hanging-around the deck, lately, but it’s been the exception.
Neither of us can recall actually seeing (much less swatting) a mosquito since 2001, when we left the heartland, save for the times we were visiting family back in Chicago.