The Next Travel

Electronic Bug Zapper

If you aren’t already familiar with the hand held insect zapper, you are really going to like it and if you have had one before, I’m sure you’ll welcome it back like an old pal! The hand held insect zapper does just what it says: it zaps bugs. But it does it really, very well.

Any bug that is touched by the wiring of the handheld bug zapper is fried. Smaller insects like midges and mosquitoes are disintegrated with a very pleasing flash and a crack. Larger insect, like house flies and wasps are killed, but don’t explode like the smaller ones.

Just how many times have these flying insects taken the edge off an otherwise lovely evening in the garden? Or how many times have you not been able to get a good night’s sleep, because you know there’s at least one mosquito in the bedroom. It has happened to me dozens and dozens of times, I know! It is very satisfying to get your revenge with the handheld bug killer.

I don’t like killing anything unnecessarily – I’m married to a Buddhist- but mosquitoes? I’m sorry, they have to go. And the hand held bug killer does it without any messing about. No waiting and hoping they’ll fly into the ultraviolet light and then into the mesh. No, one sweep of the hand held bug zapper and the mosie’s gone and you can hear whether you got her or not. (I say her, because the sucking mosquitoes always are females – honest, I wasn’t being sexist).

There are two basic kinds of electronic bug killer. There’s the battery operated bug zapper and the rechargeable electric bug zapper. Both work on the same principle, but I prefer the rechargeable type, although I guess you could use rechargeable batteries too. (I bet they would be more expensive that the bug zapper in the first place). Anyway, I have been using a handheld bug killer of the rechargeable kind for five years and I am ecstatic about them.

These days, I spend a great deal of time in northern Thailand with my wife, so you can bet your life that my electronic bug killer gets a good work-out practically every evening. We usually eat in the garden in the evening and all socializing is done outside by tradition, especially in the country, where we live, so it comes in real handy. I also use my electric bug zapper to ’sweep’ the bedroom for bugs before we retire at night, just like a secret agent.

The electronic bug killer seems to improve every time I buy one, which makes it difficult to give you definite specifications. The hand held bug zappers I bought four or five years ago, often failed after six to nine months of purchase, although their ability to store a charge was less after four or five months.

However, the latest electric bug zapper will easily last 9-12 months and still be very pokey after nine months. My newest model even has a strong torch called a headlamp built into it. I’m not certain what it’s supposed to be for, but if you think that revenge is sweet, you can lure mosquitoes with it and then kill them with your handheld insect zapper.