Bill, there are sprays for no-see-ums. We live in Southern Florida and if we are taking an after dinner walk try to make it a point to be back before dusk when those bugs are the worst. Unlike mosquitos you don't even see or feel yourself getting bit. The bites will itch intensely several times a day for several days. And they always itch during the night enough to wake you up and make you miserable. We've learned not to scratch or try to ignore the itching, to just get up and put the aloe with lidocaine on the bites if we want to be able to get back to sleep. I stayed on Hilton Head about four years ago in late winter and I noticed there were a lot of trees and pine trees. So very wooded. Not sure if they get the no-see-ums but I would expect a lot mosquitos and probably flies in the warmer months and I know they have palmetto bugs.
People new to the South or those who have never seen palmetto bugs are usually totally freaked out by them.
I do feel no-see-ums when they bite me. At times they, or other gnats/flies, are all around my face and I have to fan them away or get inside. Mosquitos don't seem to bite me very often even when others around me are being "eaten up". I attribute it to have grown up in Florida playing hide and seek with the neighbor kids as we ran behind the Mosquito Control trucks as they sprayed! Not sure about my longevity, but there is that one advantage.
Palmetto bugs were very prevalent when we bought our first house in CHS. Driving into our driveway at night, the headlights of the car would catch them scurrying away. We contracted with a pest service quarterly and rarely see one now. But oddly, I see very few outside our house or around town now either, when in the past they would occasionally drop out of a tree on me or near me when out walking or I would see them here and there on the sidewalks. That hasn't happened in 8 years at least. Our "bug man" told us that Palmetto bugs don't like to live inside and that weather conditions occasionally have them seeking water or a dry spot during times of a lot of rain or flooding. The cockroaches one really doesn't want in a house are the German cockroaches. They quickly reproduce and if not removed they will leave an odor in a house that can not be gotten rid of. He claims to be able to walk into an old house and distinguish the odor of German cockroaches from that of bats.
