New Jersey mosquitoes are bad this summer, but they've been a bad joke for years

When, in New Jersey, do we not talk about mosquitoes?

True — this particular summer, with the freakish wet weather, we're talking about them a lot.

Mosquitoes in the backyard. Mosquitoes in puddles, pools, birdbaths. Mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus — up sharply this year, according to the New Jersey Department of Health, which this month reported 284 mosquito pools in 20 counties testing positive for West Nile.

But Jersey mosquitoes are old friends. More than that, they're a perverse part of state lore .

Minnesota has Paul Bunyan. The Southwest has Pecos Bill. We have the Jersey Skeeter — distinguished from all others, supposedly, by their size, aggression and uncanny ability to zero in, like a heat-seeking missile, on the tiniest patch of bare skin. 

"What is the New Jersey state bird?" goes an old joke. The answer, of course, is "the mosquito." 

And it is an old joke. People were talking about Jersey mosquitoes long before Jersey was famous for diners, mobsters or Teresa Giudice.

"Winsor McCay and His Jersey Skeeters" was the title of one of the very first animated cartoons, produced in 1912. McCay was a famous newspaper cartoonist of the period.

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"I'll be with you when the honeysuckle blooms again," announces a mosquito in a turn-of-the-20th-century cartoon, carrying a suitcase with the words "A. Mosquito, New Jersey U.S." on the side. "Will he get stung?" asks a cartoon from the 1912 Woodrow Wilson campaign, which refers to the then-Garden State governor as "the New Jersey mosquito."

There was mosquito sheet music: "The Mosquitoes Parade: A Jersey Review" reads the cover of a piano composition by one Howard Whitney.

There was even, back in the early 1900s,  a whole line of "Jersey mosquito" postcards, printed by New York's Franz Huld Company. "Marching through Jersey" reads No. 2 in the series, depicting a bug battalion. Another postcard, No. 5, depicts a vacationing mosquito family, in a car, on a "flying trip through Jersey." "Will you join us?" they ask.

Why are Jersey mosquitoes funny? Well, why is anything in New Jersey funny?

Outsiders — especially city folk — have always loved to take a swat at the Garden State. And imagining New Jersey as one big malarial fever swamp was, until Snooki came along, one of the best ways to do it. 

Also, of course, it contained an element of truth.

New Jersey is swampy — parts of it, anyway. And from the earliest times, Jersey mosquitoes had a nasty reputation. The marshes and inlets of the shore were notorious for them. The Meadowlands, even more so.

"Its ponds bred clouds of mosquitoes so voracious that during the Colonial era, local farmers would punish disobedient slaves by leaving them chained in the open overnight," wrote Steven Hart in his 2007 book about the Pulaski Skyway, "The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway."

Around the time of those early 1900s cartoons and postcards, a Rutgers scientist, John B. Smith, was shining a national spotlight on New Jersey's mosquito problem. Smith became the state entomologist in 1899, and his work on taming the North Jersey salt marshes to curb the mosquito population in nearby Jersey City gave him a big name in the early 20th century.

"He was basically the father of mosquito control," said Nick Polanin, department chairman for agriculture and natural resources at Rutgers Cooperative Extension.

"Rather than just screening and preventing, he was doing habitat prevention, draining some of the swamps, working to examine the habitats where mosquitoes breed," Polanin said.

Eventually Smith's work got a national platform: He was sent by Teddy Roosevelt to help with malaria prevention at the new Panama Canal. But his Jersey roots confirmed the popular idea of the Garden State as the mosquito capital of the U.S.A. 

"Tell Jersey we need her mosquito man Smith," reads the caption of a cartoon, depicting Uncle Sam in a swamp, surrounded by mosquitoes. Another cartoon of the period depicts Smith sitting on a book: "How to Get Rid of 'Em." 

"How to get rid of 'em." Somehow, you wouldn't talk about ticks like that. Ticks are not casual pests. Their appearance is dreaded; they have to be painstakingly removed. Nor would a cartoonist depict cheery roaches going on a family vacation. But mosquitoes, though we hate them, are like exasperating neighbors. Familiar. Even to the point of giving them a humorous nickname: Skeeter. 

So the next time a Jersey mosquito draws blood, causes you to itch and possibly exposes you to disease, just remember: It's funny.

Not as funny as Teresa Giudice. But it's funny.