Tallahassee Democrat
Wednesday, August 15, 2001, updated at 9:46PM

It scatters 'skeeters, naturally

Kirk Milne's SkinSkreen uses aloe vera, citronella and other ingredients to keep the buggers at bay

By Kathleen Laufenberg
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Smack! That's a sound Kirk Milne likes to hear - because it means he may have found a new customer for his bug spray.

"It works great - just mist yourself with it," Milne says of his non-DEET bug repellent, SkinSkreen, designed for use by both people and animals such as horses and dogs.

A former financial analyst for Waddell & Reed and a retired Canadian cattle-horse trainer, Milne never imagined he would one day find himself fiddling with bug-spray recipes. It just happened, he says.

"My wife and I live out on the Wakulla River, and for most of the year, we're surrounded by no-see-ums, mosquitoes, yellow flies, gnats and all kind of biting things," the 57-year-old says. "If you want to be outside, you've got to put something on."

That goes double for this year. The West Nile virus scare - two people in Madison County have been hospitalized with the illness - has, for some, bumped the bug-status of mosquitoes from nuisance to danger. And thanks to all the rain from Tropical Storm Barry, the expected mosquito hatch-out will only add to the concern.

"His timing is perfect," says Ralph Esposito of Milne's bug spray. "He came up to bat at just the right time."

Something natural

The Esposito Gardening Center on Capital Circle Northeast is one of several local spots now stocking Milne's spray. The 4-ounce SkinSkreen is $6.95; the 32-ounce EquuSkreen is $23.95. Both contain the same formula.

"It's selling remarkably well," Esposito says of the SkinSkreen. He attributes that to good timing and the ingredients: aloe vera, citronella (the dominant smell of the spray), capsicum, peppermint and other essential oils, lemon grass and other herbs.

The spray also is selling well at The Wilderness Way on Woodville Highway, says owner Sarah Held.

"I haven't used it personally yet," she says, "but we have sold quite a bit of it, and people say they like it." Her clients "want less DEET. They want something natural. They want something that's OK to spray on their children."

Ditto that for Nick Camechis, owner of the Capital Shoe Fixery on Magnolia Drive, another shop selling the spray.

"If I can get away with using something natural, I'm going to do it," the avid bream and bass fisherman says. "I don't like using the DEET. I feel like I'm poisoning myself."

When Milne, a long-time customer of his, asked Camechis to try the spray when he went fishing, Camechis did. It worked great for him, he says - and he's been using it ever since.

Tested in Tate's Hell

Milne's entry into the bug biz began when a friend who had cooked up a natural bug repellent asked him to test the product on the Wakulla River. He and wife Lois did - but found it didn't quite do the job.

"It didn't work with the no-see-ums, and it had an acrid order. But I got to thinking, boy, this would be great if you could get a natural product like this that did work."

So he started researching old bug-repellent recipes on the Internet and in libraries. He talked to people knowledgable about bugs. Finally, he came up with a recipe and tinkered around with the ingredients for about a year. Last summer, he and Lois took the finalized recipe out for a test spin in Tate's Hell, a state-owned stretch of swamp and forest between Carrabelle and Sumatra.

"It's pretty intense bush - beautiful, but overgrown," says Lois. "It (SkinSkreen) worked for us."

Then Milne sent out samples to people, many of whom own horses, in 18 states.

"Essentially," Milne says, "they all said they liked it."

Red-letter day

Being familiar with - and extremely fond of - horses and horse-loving people, he started going to various horse competitions and hawking his bug spray. One of his first ventures out was to the Red Hills Horse Trials in March. There, he sold some to horse trainer and breeder Darren Chiacchia, a member of the U.S. Equestrian Team.

A month or so later, he spotted Chiacchia again at another horse show in Ocala. The well-known trainer was heading straight toward his booth.

"I knew it was going to be either a red-letter day or a very long one, depending on what he thought of EquuSkreen," Milne recalls.

Chiacchia liked it. So much so, he bought more.

"We try to stay away from a lot of the heavy chemical things; you have to think about what the grooms are exposed to on a daily basis," says Chiacchia, who recently accepted Milne as one of his sponsors.

Another thing Chiacchia says he likes about Milne's bug juice is that it also helps to relieve the rashes horses sometimes get from saddle belts. Milne attributes that to the recipe's aloe vera and capsicum.

While a broker has placed SkinSkreen in 159 Eckerd Drugs stores in New York, Milne says he continues to make personal calls on local stores to see if they might be interested in his bug spray.

"I love doing this," Milne says. "I'm meeting a lot of new people, and I feel like I'm building something."

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