Because my parents acquired a second home in Marshfield to be near the ocean I took it upon myself to be the official owner of solving pest problems at the seaside location. The primary pest situation due to a town named after a "marsh" are moquitos. They like to breed in the 11 acre lot behind the house and come out in force by the pool. The solution that I had heard about was the Mosquito Magnet. It is a little contraption that eats propane and converts it into energy to run a fan and puts out CO2 along with Octonol from a special insert to lure unsuspecting mosquitos to their death in a trap. It ultimately is like a lobster trap where the bugs can get in but they can't get out.

When I first installed it I had all of the troubles of getting the pieces aligned from a distance. I had it delivered to a location where I wasn't, needed to buy a propane tank, and then had to get it running. The initial problem with the design of the mosquito magnet is that it requires 24 hours of charging the battery before you can start it. So I had to put it together one day, plug it in, go home, and then test turning it on the following week. I did finally get it working after a few weeks going back and forth in year one and it killed a forest full of mosquitos. So I believe it can work.

The following year was also pretty good. Despite the winter meaning I needed to charge it again I did so and then took it out again this year. But this year after I got it running on Memorial day it was dead a few weeks later. So last weekend I spent countless hours trying to figure out how to get it running again. The product comes with two odd gadgets that I hadn't needed to use. The first is a plastic fitting that connects to the propane tank and to the regulator. The instructions for it claim that it purges something. So I tried using that and heard a slight hiss when I inserted the reverse threaded and therefore confusing plastic fitting. Hoping the Magnet would turn on I got it to run for a few minutes and then it crapped out. Now this presents a problem because it is supposed to charge for 24 hours each time, but when it doesn't work it is a nightmare since I can't exactly go back and forth 45 minutes every time I want to charge and test it. So I dragged a different propane tank in and tried again. It worked for a few minutes and then crapped out again. Figuring that I might not need the power to charge as much I dragged everything into the basement so that I could keep the Magnet plugged into the wall charger while testing since it would have constant power (sorta) if it were connected to the wall. I then began a series of tests with it purging with the fitting, plugging it in for a few hours, overnight, while at brunch, and had it going once for an hour and a half until I tried to roll it out the door to where the mosquitos were. At this point it died again.

So out of desparation my dad and I went to the store to see if we could either get a new one or get advice on getting this one to work. At the store they mentioned that I needed to "purge the lines" with the other attachment, a little orange thing that connects to what looks like a bicycle wheel air gauge. I was certain that I had the other attachment because I had seen it hundreds of times so I told my dad we didn't need to pay the $12 for it but did need to pay the $10 for the three special CO2 cartridges that you connect to the orange thing that adapts the CO2 cartridge to the bicycle wheel air guage thing. So when we got home predictably I couldn't find this part, which was the size of a screw and proceeded to wander through all occupied zones of the 11 acres looking for it because I was convinced that I hadn't been stupid enough to lose this essential piece of hardware.

So finally on Sunday I tried a few more times to trick it into running only to have it crap out on me again. So I plugged it in for the week, went home, and vowed to return next week with the orange adapter and CO2 cartridges. The net of it was that I would probably have killed more bugs standing in the field swatting and kiling the bugs whenever they landed on me than I have this year fighting with this difficult to maintain bug execution chamber. But I hate those bugs and I will probably try for the next 10 years to get a better bug trap system in place.

This is a good example of how if someone, me, wants to accomplish a certain task with a product that no matter how ridiculous the user experience is the user will still go through it in order to accomplish the task and if it works after doing all of those painful annoying and ridiculous things to accomplish the task then the user will swear by the product and recommend it to all of their friends. I do urge any company to build a similar device to the Mosquito Magnet that avoids all of this maintenance crap. They could make a killing!