09:21 – The mosquitoes have been horrible this year. They even get indoors, presumably on Colin’s coat. They’re out there lying in wait even at high noon. Early mornings and evenings are even worse.
So yesterday I decided to start using DEET even during the day. Unfortunately, I had no idea if we had any DEET and, if so, where it was. The first thought that crossed my mind, of course, was “I wonder how difficult this stuff is to synthesize.” Not difficult, as it turns out, but it requires a couple precursors that I don’t have in stock. Oh, well.
When Barbara got home, I asked her if we had any DEET. She said to look on top of the filing cabinet in the basement. Of course. Where else would we keep our DEET? As it turned out, we had two spray cans of deep-woods OFF, one relatively new and the other looked to be antique. The change in contents over the years between those two can is interesting. The old can lists the contents as “Active Ingredients. 25.00%: N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, 19.00%, other isomers, 1.00%, 2,3,4-5-bis(2-butylene)-tetrahydro-2-furaldehyde, 1.00%, N-octyl bicycloheptane dicarboximide, 4.00%. Inert Ingredients. 75.00%.” The new can lists the contents as “Active Ingredient: DEET ….. 25%, Inert Ingredients ….. 75%.”
Apparently, they’ve both simplified their formula and gotten less precise about measuring what they put into it. And what’s this 25% crap? Whatever happened to 100% DEET? You’d think that “DEEP WOODS OFF!” would contain a manly percentage of DEET rather than the girlish 25%. What would Tim the Toolman Taylor say about this dilute stuff masquerading as a serious mosquito repellent?