&*$%#@ mosquitoes

I got bitten by a mosquito a couple of days ago. I made it pay with its life immediately afterwards, but the damage was done. I was bitten on my right upper arm and on my left wrist.

I HATE mosquitoes with a passion. I’m terribly allergic to the bites. I don’t just end up with hard, itchy little red lumps – I end up with big swollen lumps that are tender and itch like mad. The one on my wrist has swelled up so badly that I can’t wear my watch at the moment. There was just less meat for the poison to absorb into. The one on my upper arm, though sore and itchy, is nowhere near as bad.

Still, this isn’t the worst set of bites I’ve ever gotten. Running a close second is the summer just before I started seventh grade, and our week-long church camp was at Fort Flagler. That particular summer, it was a mosquito breeding ground. We all were miserable, even the adults. In fact, it was so bad that they sent all of us kids away to the beach mid-week and called in an exterminator. I was going to the camp nurse to get Benadryl sprayed on my swelling legs.

The worst bites I ever got was while I was in college. I took the best astronomy course from a really great instructor – he was in his late 70’s, was a former Navy man, and just really knew his stuff. One of the things that we had to do was go on “field trips” to a certain park in Everett to do night sky viewing. One of our final exams was having to identify 20 stars/constellations in the night sky. It was summertime, and we were right across the water from the naval station. And there were mosquitoes in abundance at this park – something the instructor had forgotten to warn us about. After that first field trip, I came away with three bites on each hand, and my fingers on my right hand swelled up and looked like sausages for a few days. That made working and going to school very interesting. I was so miserable. We students ended up wearing extra layers and bug repellent to all future field trips to avoid the “nuclear mosquitoes”, as we called them.

For some reason, mosquitoes find me extra tasty, so I’m usually the first one bitten. I don’t know what it is, but they just like me. The feeling is not mutual. So, I just try to be very careful about where I am at night when the bugs come out. Luckily, my house isn’t around any major still bodies of water, unlike my parents, who have neighbors with wetlands/a big swamp in their backyards. Can you say, “mosquito breeding ground”?

I’m going to go pop a Benadryl and rub some more anti-itch cream on my bites. Hold all my calls.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 1:50 am and is filed under General.
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