The Mosquito Host

Dinner time gorging.

With nearly a year’s worth of rain falling in less than one day our little desert morphed into a mosquito breeding factory.

Just answering the front door lately requires rapid-fire reflexes and a quicker than a kid selling wrapping paper open-shut technique.

The last thing you want is a mosquito or two wafting about the room you’re sitting in. Very seldom do you hear the high-pitched warning zzzzzzzzz as they move in for the kill. They’re usually silent as they sneak in for a landing behind your knee or elbow or ankle. By time you realize you’re losing blood it’s too late. The itching commences.

Growing a massive army. (Image: James Gathany, CDC) – A New Model for Predicting Outbreaks of West Nile Virus. Gross L, PLoS Biology Vol. 4/4/2006, e101.

I’ve read books that describe swarms of mosquitos so thick in some regions of Alaska that an animal or a human can suffocate in a cloud of them. I kid you not! Relatives of those little monsters must have caught a jet stream and landed here, troops amassing by the millions daily.

I’ve wondered, ever so briefly, if they’re indirectly related to the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz. Mean little things carrying off young girls and small dogs. Don’t laugh, it’s possible. Mutations in evil creatures take on hideous transformations. Think “Alien” or “The Green Hornet.”

Forget taking the littles with their oh-so-succulent-soft-skin to the park for swinging or sliding or building sand castles. That is unless they like pink Calamine lotion and you don’t mind them looking like they have the chicken pox.

When someone walks a dog around the park I now recognize the arm flailing they’re doing not as a frantic wave to a friend, or a signal for help, but an actual life-saving maneuver to keep from getting carried away by swarms of flying blood drinkers. Zombie apocalypse scenarios are so passe’ nowadays.

I have no idea who to give credit to for this amazingly accurate photo.

To guarantee total terror, I’m dressing up as a mosquito this year for Halloween. Even Dads will run screaming in fright. I expect that haunted houses will sport a few of the evil black winged buzzing terrors for that extra horror factor.

Oh sure, I soak myself in some top of the line brand of mosquito repellant before I venture out on my morning walks, which helps only slightly. I feel a bit like a movie star with miniature mosquito paparazzi in my face, and around every corner, waiting for a vulnerable bit of skin to show itself so they can go all crazy over it.

I also suspect they’ve developed a liking to citronella scented anything and actually use it as a way of pinpointing vulnerable human targets.

These just aren’t repulsive enough to the little terrors anymore.

What we really need is a new breed of mosquito repellant, Nuke Em Howitzer 4000 sounds ominous doesn’t it? I’m sure the military could come up with something sufficiently deadly and give it a great acronym: BSA: Blood Sucker Annihilator. Or maybe KILL: Kreepy Insect Life Limiter.

Costco could market their own brand of Mosquito repellant/poison and call it West Nile Begone Extra Lethal in gallon sized spray bottles. Sure you might feel a little woozy for a few minutes, but at least you’d be able to reach your car without inhaling more than three or four of the pests.

Where did the helicopters raining down insecticide overnight disappear to? I’ve heard them in years past. Probably grounded by mosquito hordes weighing down the wings or filling up the engine compartment and gumming up the gas tanks.

More menacing than Zombies and flying monkeys.

I just want to take the garbage out without “Jaws” theme music running through my head as I dodge the little blood suckers.

Never before have I wished for the dry heat to return like I have this year. I suspect the mosquitos have something to do with the trajectory of that hurricane that’s pumping even more moisture into our normally dry state. You laugh, but these little dudes have conniving and vicious written all over them. I wouldn’t rule out weather manipulation as part of their arsenal.

A mosquito’s been hovering around the room for a while now. Probably taken a half a pint out of me already. Too bad we can’t harness their evil powers for good and turn them into phlebotomists.

I’m itchy. I think I’ll go hide under a really thick blanket until mid October.

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Joke of the day: “I sprayed a mosquito with mosquito repellent and now he’ll never have any friends.”