The city of Dallas launches its first major attack of the season on mosquitoes Thursday night and into Friday morning. The spraying will occur west of Central Expressway, so it really doesn't concern us. Yet.

Eventually, though, we're bound to have a bug-spray truck cruising through the area, spewing out controlled levels of poison. But maybe we can forestall the inevitable.

Make sure outdoor flower pots are free of standing water in those little plate thingies on the bottom. Check the rain gutters to make sure they're not harboring a mosquito maternity ward.

And — this from personal experience — drop a mosquito dunk under the grate of French drains.

Last year, one of our French drain lines backed up — dear god, the mess. After it was free-flowing again, I checked on it the next day. I raised the grate and was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to see a teeming swarm of mosquito larvae in the stagnant water directly below the grate.

French drains evidently don't completely, uh, drain.

No telling how many blood-sucking babies we sired. Oh, the shame.

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