Admit it. There's nothing quite sooo satisfying as giving that newly landed mosquito a well deserved swat or slap. That is until it disintigrates into a mushy pool of blood on your arm - and you realize it's your blood! Eww.

Not only do you have a fast developing itchy mosquito bite to deal with, you've got major blood, guts and gore to clean up as well.

There's got to be a better way.

Amongst mosquitoes, it's only the female that bites. And she will continue to bite and draw blood until her abdomen is full. If she is interrupted before she is full, she will just fly to the next available person. After filling up, she will give it a rest for two or three days, lay her eggs, then is up and off and ready to bite again!

Although I travel incognito,
I can't deceive the smart mosquito;
While others also have corpuscles,
Mine are the ones toward which she hustles;
My blood is thin and I have asthma;
She doesn't care, she wants my plasma.
Mosquitoes seem to love the rind of me,
The front, the sides, and the behind of me;
I've tried to think why they're so smitten,
And as I think, once more I'm bitten.
Dick Emmons

Scientists have discovered that 1 in 10 people are highly attractive to mosquitoes and that 85% of susceptibility is genetics. In short a mosquito attractant! Well not much you can do about that is there?

They've also identified certain elements of our body chemistry that invite mosquitoes to swarm closer. You are more likely to be a target if you produce excess amounts of uric acid, have high concentrations of steroids on your skin or if you're pregnant. Pregnant women produce greater amounts of exhaled carbon dioxide - a known mosquito attractant.

"There's a tremendous amount of research being conducted on what compounds and odors people exude that might be attractive to mosquitoes," says Joeseph Conlon, technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Association (AMCA).

Unfortunately with over 400 different compounds to examine, it's a long and laborious process and researchers are only just starting to scratch the surface.

If you don't want the bite, then you need something that scares off the skeeters. DEET has been around since the 1950s and is regarded as the most effective chemical repellent on the market. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) began recommending Picaridin as an alternative repellent. Proven to be as effective as DEET, it has been used worldwide since 1998, and is light, clean and virtually odorless.

But just how safe is it to coat yourself in chemical based products like DEET? A substance by the way that is known to melt plastic. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded: "as long as consumers follow label directions and take proper precautions, insect repellents containing DEET do not present a health concern." and released the following recommendations for its use:

• Follow label directions & precautions
• Use sparingly
• Avoid spraying on or near open skin,eyes, mouth, and nose, under clothing, or near food
• Wash treated skin with soap and water

For those of you who want to avoid chemical-based repellents altogether, alternatives do exist. There is a wonderful vodka based recipe on e-how. www.ehow.com Does this mean you can sip, slop, slap all at the same time?

1. Place 1/2 cup organic apple vinegar into a lge mixing bowl
2. Mix in 1/2 cup vodka
3. Add 2 Tbsp citronella oil and mix thoroughly
4. Transfer contents into a small spray bottle
5. Apply liberally for best effect

However, repellents don't actually kill mosquitoes.  So if you do want to cut down on the number of potential blood suckers in your yard, then a mosquito trap could be the answer. The complete opposite of repellents; they work by attracting, trapping, then killing female mosquitoes.

And when placed strategically near known breeding sites, "they have knocked mosquito populations down," reports Conlon.(WebMD, July 28, 2009)

While there are a number of brands out there, Mega-Catch™ , a consumer favourite, are among the highest rated mosquito traps on the market.  Even better they don't use harmful chemicals, fogs or sprays to kill mosquitoes. And in indepedent tests Mega-Catch™ traps have been shown to capture hundreds of mosquitoes in a single night which must surely cut down on the number of ankle bites over summer.

So if you are one of those genetically susceptible mosquito magnets, have a severe allergic reaction to mosquito bites or live in an area where you are at risk of being exposed to mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile Virus, Dengue Fever or Encephalitis, then a mosquito trap is probably a sound investment. Because unfortunately it looks like the ever-evolving mosquito - who has been around for 170 million years or more - is here to stay.