“Occasionally you get a mosquito, but you don’t get attacked. You can sit out on the deck at night and enjoy yourself.”

After the bug season most Mainers have suffered through this year, those are words to embrace. But, to tell the truth, Larry Stettner of Southwest Harbor didn’t spend almost $1,200 just to keep the thirsty hordes away from his deck.

If you pass by the neat gray house with white and maroon trim, it’s hard to tell what grabs your attention first: the flower gardens, the massive American elm tree, the white picket fence with the arch over the twin gates or the 60-by-48-foot croquet lawn in the side yard.

If it happens to be the croquet lawn, you’ve stumbled on the real reason a man would spend such an amount to combat mosquitoes. Larry Stettner lives and breathes croquet. This is not the croquet you play with the cousins every Fourth of July at the family reunion. This is a game that is played by people who are serious about their sport on a manicured lawn that looks and feels like a fine golf green. Larry is the kind of guy who wakes up in the middle of the night replaying bad shots.

At the 28th Claremont Croquet Classic, Stettner lost the singles championship by a single point to a 20-year-old Californian, Ben Rothman. It was Rothman’s third consecutive singles championship at the Southwest Harbor tournament. The plot thickens when one learns that Rothman, now ranked 25th in the country, is the son of Stettner’s cousin. And guess with whom the young man started spending summers when he was 12. Due to the increased tournament participation this year, part of the week’s matches was played on Stettner’s lawn!

For Francine and Larry Stettner, the love affair with Southwest Harbor, if not its mosquitoes, began when they visited here on their honeymoon in 1972. Summer after summer they returned to the place they loved until in 1996 Larry retired as a psychology professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, and they bought the house on Manset Road.

By this time Larry was well-established in his new hobby. Of course, as with most couples, there are two sides to the story. If you listen to Larry, during the summer of 1984, he saw a sign in the grocery store announcing the croquet tournament at the Claremont. The normal progression followed. He watched. He played. He got his own set.

According to Francine, he was born into it. His father and an uncle were “croquet nuts” back in Brooklyn. When the sun went down, they surrounded the field with cars and turned the headlights on. Whichever story you want to believe, it is not difficult to picture Larry flat on his stomach, gray beard on the lawn, his ponytail hidden by a broad-brimmed straw hat, lining up his next shot.

Which brings us back to mosquitoes. You certainly cannot expect a man of Stettner’s determination to aspire to anything but the best. That is the reason that between the woods in back of the house, and the croquet lawn with its line of eight spectator chairs at one end, sits the Mosquito Magnet Pro.

It is one of a new breed of bug fighters that are taking the war to the enemy. Powered by either electricity or propane, the exterminators release carbon dioxide and another agent, octenol, which imitate the presence of humans exhaling into the atmosphere. It is our breath that makes the little critters home in on us. As the insects near the source of the machine’s “breath,” they are sucked into a net where they eventually die. The idea is to leave the machine running 24-7 and in four to six weeks there will be a noticeable reduction of flying pests.

Think again if you are hoping that this is a noncontact sport. The dead bugs need to be emptied out of the net periodically. The octenol dispenser needs replacing about every three weeks. If you are using propane for power, the tank needs refilling about every 21 days. Perhaps, most onerous of all, for optimum results, the whole contraption should be moved when the wind shifts. The latter is due to the fact that the traps work best when they are upwind of the mosquito breeding area. That can be even more difficult if you are using an electric model.

How well do they work? Can the average household get by with one mosquito trap or does it need a line of them, like siege guns, around a property? Jim Dill is deeply involved in pest management for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service. “Yes they work. But, alone, they won’t remove your mosquito problem.”

Dill adds the depressing thought that mosquitoes can fly up to a half-mile looking for a meal. His view is that the traps “collect a lot of mosquitoes, but you have plenty left to bite you.” He sees the traps as one weapon in the arsenal, pointing out that weaknesses such as a shift in wind may blow a whole new army of insects into your yard.

Remember that the singles final of the Claremont Croquet Classic was played at the Claremont Hotel. As would any well-mannered croquet player, Larry Stettner left his Mosquito Pro home. Could it be that, in his one-point loss to Ben Rothman, Stettner was distracted by the buzzing of a mosquito?

Methods of mosquito attack

There are all types of bug repellers as well as killers of the market. These range from the simple such as sticky flypaper or citronella candles to the more complicated such as bug zappers. The latter combine a light to draw the insects and an electric grid that “zaps” the critter dead. While it is intensely satisfying to hear the thing go off when a bug hits it, personal experience shows that the pile of carcasses under the thing usually contains many more moths and other flying insects than mosquitoes.

According to a University of Kentucky Department of Entomology (www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Entomology) information sheet, “Practical Advice for Homeowners,” various advertised control methods offer differing results. On citronella candles: “Use multiple candles placed close to where people are. A single candle … probably won’t provide much benefit other than atmosphere.”

On portable electronic devices that utilize high-frequency sound: “Save your money, these devices seldom, if ever, provide a measure of relief.” The Kentucky scientists worry that the type of trap using carbon dioxide, warmth, light and octenol as attractants may “attract more mosquitoes into the area one is hoping to protect.” Their final thought is that “if the device or method sounds too good to be true, then probably it is.”

Mosquito Magnet products, which range from the Defender at $295 to the Pro Plus at $1,395 are available at: Black Stove Shops, The Home Depot, EBS Building Supply stores, and some True Value dealers.

Similar products, made by Blue Rhino, are available at some Target and Sam’s Clubs. The Mosquito Deleto 2200 made by Coleman sells for $173 and may be available at Wal-Mart, Sears or Sam’s Club.