Buzz Off!

DON'T LET BUGS GET THE BETTER OF YOU THIS SUMMER.

You may not have invited mosquitoes, flies or ticks (or obnoxious Uncle Al, for that matter) to your barbecue, but they showed up anyway. To help you deal with unwanted guests this summer, SELF consulted a panel of experts to get the top tips on critter control. (Sorry, we can't help fend off human pests!)

Squirt on protection. If it does not say deet (N, N-diethylmtoluamide), don't bother. Repellents for casual use should contain 10 to 35 percent of the ultimate bug buffer. "Deet interferes with insects' ability to detect lactic acid, which is one thing that attracts them to our skin," says Mark S. Fradin, M.D., clinical associate professor of dermatology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Stick with repellents such as Off! Deep Woods V spray, Cutter Backwoods or Sawyer Controlled Release lotion. Skip citronella, which offers only minimal protection, Dr. Fradin says. Does the thought of chemicals make you nervous? Deet is powerful but quite safe when used as directed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta

Dry off your yard. Mama mosquitoes lay eggs in pools of standing water, so to stop a brood of bugs from hatching outside your house, turn over buckets and cans, and keep your pooch's bowl inside. If you have a pond but no fish, call your local health department for mosquito fish (they may be free). They live in still water and eat the insect's larvae.

Pretreat your bites. If you're particularly sensitive to bites, take a nondrowsy over-the-counter antihistamine about an hour before going outside, says Steven Weisholtz, M.D., chief of infectious diseases at Englewood Hospital Medical Center in New Jersey. The drugs can't prevent bites, but they may reduce redness, swelling and itching if you do get nabbed.

Bite back. If you get chomped, press an x into the bite with your nail to temporarily distract you from the pain. An even better fix: Apply ice or a cold compress. And don't freak out about West Nile virus. Although there were more than 4,000 cases reported last year in the United States, fewer than 1 percent of people became severely ill. And once you've been exposed, you'll probably develop a long-term immunity, says Dr. Weisholtz.

Act fast. Some ticks transmit Lyme disease, which can lead to fever, headache, muscle and joint pain and even arthritis. But ticks usually need to be attached to your body for at least two days to infect you. If you live in the Northeast, where the bloodsuckers are prevalent, always do a postoutdoors body check. If a tick has made a meal of you, use tweezers to grasp it close to the skin and firmly pluck it straight out. You can flush the tick farewell or kill it in rubbing alcohol. Whatever you do, be sure to clean the bite with an antiseptic such as Bactine, and keep an eye out for the telltale sign that appears in 80 percent of infections: a bull's-eye rash.