Soon, you and your family will be outdoors having picnics, gardening, going camping, but if this spring continues to be as wet as it has been, you are going to have plenty of company. Six-legged company. The kind that bites.

Days of rain have made the wetlands of Milford even wetter than usual. That means it’s time for the city to start its mosquito control program. A relatively mild winter means a lot of mosquitoes overwintered. They will soon be joined by new larvae hatching in standing water. The way to stop that from happening is to spray larvacide into all that standing water.

Statewide, the Agricultural experiment station has close to 100 mosquito traps set up to keep tabs on the population and see if any of them contain the West Nile Virus. That is a health problem that is not going away.

“Last year was a record year for West Nile Virus activity in the state, both in the number of virus isolations we obtained in our program and in the number of human cases reported,” said John Shepard of the CT Agricultural Experiment Station. “Last year there were 23 human cases of West Nile virus reported.”

One of last year’s human cases turned out to be fatal. So while the experts trap and spray, you and your family can do your part as well by following the”Three Ds.”

“Defend against mosquitoes by using an EPA registered repellent,” explained Milford City Health Director Deepa D. Joseph. “Dress in light-colored, loose-fitting clothing and, especially, draining. Any sources of water collection that might be on your property.”

That could be just about anything – kiddie pools, flower pots, trash cans. If it can hold water, it can hold mosquito larvae. Dump it out.