Mosquitoes, midges, horseflies, ticks, and other blood-sucking brethren can spoil the impression of outdoor recreation, fishing, picking mushrooms, or just walking in the forest. It’s good if you have a spray can in your pocket with “Data” or another repellent. But not every repellent can provide protection from all types of bloodsuckers at once. In addition, the can is not eternal; it can end at the most inopportune moment, it can be lost, it can be forgotten at home, in the end! But there are several ways to protect yourself and your loved ones from bites and itching, even in the most remote taiga, without special equipment from a store or pharmacy. I will give a few of them as an example. The methods described below provide more or less reliable protection against all types of blood-sucking insects.
Method one
In this method, ants will help us.
You will need a handkerchief, or any other cloth thing.
Everything is extremely simple: we put a handkerchief, in the unfolded form, directly on the anthill.
For 15-20 minutes, while the ants soak the tissue with their acid. After the specified time, we remove from the anthill a scarf that is already wet from acid, carefully shake the ants from it, and wipe it with exposed parts of the body - face, hands.
It is also necessary to wipe the cuffs of the sleeves, collar, and socks on the ankles so that creeping bloodsuckers, such as a tick, do not creep under the clothes. The smell, of course, is the same (everyone knows how formic acid smells!), But then, as soon as I picked up my handkerchief from the anthill - all the mosquitoes and the midges were blown away! All insects instinctively try to stay away from both anthills and the ants themselves. The method is very good, with a very long lasting effect. One procedure is enough until a person is washed with water. But there is a drawback of such protection - individual intolerance. Therefore, you should first make sure that you are not allergic to formic acid. To do this, anoint a small area of the skin, in the wrist area. If redness and itching appear, then it is better to refuse this method.
Second way
This method has two options, very similar to each other. They can probably be called "stationary"! If in the first method you can go wherever you want after processing, then these two methods are tied to a specific place and protect from insects only within the parking lot. They are good, for example, on fishing, or just on a halt, during a hike. So, the first option: this is a fungus-tinder fungus.
Such mushrooms grow, as a rule, on old or dried trees.
You will need to tear dry old mushroom from the trunk.
You will also need any thin branch on which this mushroom can be planted.
Now we set fire to the edge of the mushroom, and stick a branch into the ground, about five meters from the parking lot.
You can make several of these smokers, and arrange them on the leeward side. Just before you stick a branch with a smoldering mushroom into the ground, cleanse the ground of dry needles, leaves and moss, in order to prevent a fire. The second option is almost no different from the first. Only here we will use dry cattail. Many mistakenly call it reeds.
So, you need to pluck on the nearest swamp, several heads of last year's cattail. Preferably on a small stalk.
This material is perfect for protection against small midges - it is the smoke of a smoldering cattail that is, for some reason, more afraid of others than others.We repeat the above procedures, as with a mushroom: we set fire to the head, and stick the stem into a place cleaned from debris in the ground. Rogoz smolders stronger than the mushroom, and therefore, it can be placed a little further.
The main thing is not to forget, then be sure to extinguish the smoldering smokes behind you - bury in the ground, or drown in water.
In the same way, the well-known chaga can be used. It smokes no worse than a tinder fungus or a cattail. By the way, chaga can be used in the country, during, say, digging a garden and planting potatoes. Personally, I stocked up this wonderful mushroom thoroughly. In addition to being a wonderful and useful alternative to tea, it also protects the garden from midges and mosquitoes.
Inhaling the smoke of a smoldering fungus, of course, will not add health, but I think that it’s better than breathing chemical smoke from a smoldering spiral from mosquitoes, or the same fumigator. You can also use birch tar. It’s a simple matter to get birch bark tar in the forest. The only thing is that this is a more time-consuming process compared to the methods described above. And how to drive the tar out of birch bark, I already described in one of the articles.
