On Mosquitoes- by Les

Before embarking on our journey, we were all obligated to stop by the health clinic to make sure that our immunizations were up to date.  I chose a place called “Passport Health” as it was quite near my office and came with some good recommendations.  The staff were professional and friendly, and charted a rather formidable list of “disease risks” that we would be taking by traveling off of the beaten path into the third and fourth worlds.   As I perused the list of potential insect borne diseases and intestinal infections, I had flashbacks to my grade school books showing pictures of that poor sot sentenced to carry his enormous nuts around in a wheelbarrow after being bitten by a tsetse fly in Africa.   The potential inflictions included Hep A and B, Tetanus/Diphtheria, Measles, Mumps, Typhoid Fever, Yellow Fever, something called Pneumococcal, and of course, MALARIA.  The mother of all insect born plagues.   The provided map of risk zones basically highlighted a band around the world with everything between the tropics, and also included all of South America and most of Africa.  Yep, that covered everywhere we were going.

In preparation for our three month battle with the malicious disease bearing mosquitoes, we armed ourselves with Deet wipes and Malaria pills- to be taken before, during, and after each “risk” location.  I was a bit leery of taking the medication due to the long list of side effects, which included hallucinations.  That last thing I wanted to do was envision foot long centipedes or large carnivorous animals at every turn.  Luckily for us, many of the huts we stayed in came complete with mosquito netting, much to the delight of Susie, who had a novelty net over her bed as a child in California.

Our first problematic encounter came during our week at Marloth Park in East Africa while staying at our good friend Laine Pepper’s safari house.  Situated adjacent to the Crocodile River, which did indeed bear man-eating crocodiles and wallowing hippos, I imagined clouds or mosquitoes just waiting to descend upon us when we returned home each evening after the day’s adventure.   The house has three large bedrooms, each with a mosquito net hanging precisely in the middle.   At the outset of our trip we decided that Noa would stay in our room whenever possible (to insure that he wasn’t carried off in the night by cannibals or large animals), and thus we were obligated to place the three blow up mattresses in the master bedroom in a triangle.  However, this triangular arrangement made it impossible for any of us to enjoy the safety of the mosquito net.  So each night we slathered our arms and faces with repellant, performed a visual inspection of the room with the flashlight, and hunkered down under the blankets for our night of rest.

Inevitably, as soon as I began to drift off, I would hear the high-pitched buzz of the one disease laden pest that managed to evade my sweep, as he zeroed in on the warm blood of our exposed jugglers.   I took this as a personal declaration of war, and steeled myself for a night-long battle to the death.   My tactic was simple- I would expose my neck to give my enemy an irresistible target- thrumming with heat and blood that I knew the malicious little kamikaze dive-bomber could not ignore.  When I heard the whine of his wings get close to the target, I would use my ninja-like quickness to bring down the hand of wrath and smite the vermin before he could execute his vampire-like deed. Soon a small pile of fallen microscopic pests would be littered about the battlefield of my pillow.  I imagined the word getting out to the rest of his mosquito family that this was one human family not to be trifled with, and to seek their fill elsewhere on less able bodied fare. 

In reality, the little bugger somehow managed to miraculously evade my swiping hand with each decent, and thus began a long night of cat and mouse.  He was not able feast on my blood, nor deposit his malaria carrying parasite into my body.  But to his credit I was not able to sleep, and spent a bleary red-eyed night contemplating the paradox of a creature so small having the ability to torment one a thousand times his size.