In the war against skeeters, victory is not assured

It’s on. The war. The one between myself and the mosquitoes.

So far this summer, the mosquitoes have been winning. I’ll occasionally assassinate one of the bloodthirsty little vermin, but for each bug that falls, 100 leap in to take his place. 

Or rather, her place. Only female mosquitoes suck blood and bite people. The males live on flower nectar and listen to a lot of music by The Grateful Dead. I will not comment on the significance of this fact with regard to male/female relationships in general.

Regardless of gender, mosquitoes are nature’s way of getting back at humanity for global warming, deforestation and the music of Justin Bieber.  That doesn’t mean we have to take it lying down.

I know I’m not. Not any more.

At heart I’m a pacifist. I maintain a live and let live attitude, even when it comes to nature’s least likable creatures; bats, snakes, mice, ex-wives … if they leave me alone, I don’t go out of my way to bother them.

But this year mosquitoes seem more intent on world domination than Kim Jong-un, and they’ve been at it far longer than the stubby Korean dictator with the bad haircut. Though mosquitoes haven’t developed a nuclear weapons program, they’re at least as annoying as Jong-un.

For me the war started last weekend as I went about the annual business of setting up my lawn furniture, backyard canopy and tiki lamps. I no sooner got into my backyard than a horde of mosquitoes (I consider anything more than a dozen a horde) descended on me out of a clear, blue sky like WWII kamikazes. 

Without regard for their own personal safety, they covered my arms, neck and face with a blanket of questing skeeter proboscis (proboscises? probosci? — whatever the plural of mosquito snoots is). With a wave of my mighty human hand I killed dozens, but more flew in, wave after wave after ceaseless wave; like zombies in a George Romero flick, they just kept on coming at me.

I was hopelessly outnumbered. Six or seven skeeters stuck to me as I escaped into the relative safety of my apartment. These I killed out of hand, but not before they’d all feasted on my blood, which based on all evidence, must be the tastiest blood in the county.

Then yesterday afternoon I struck back with a ferocity rivaling Luke Skywalker’s blasting of the Death Star (non-nerds try to stick with me here).

Armed with every available anti-mosquito weapon known to science, I reentered my bug infested yard. First, I fogged the area with some chemical that — had it been used in Vietnam — could have changed the outcome of that war. Mosquitoes dropped by the hundreds.

Then I filled the tiki lamps with a citronella-based oil and lit ‘em up. I also lit three mosquito repellent coils and set them at strategic locations around the patio.

Finally, I doused my body with a spray made up of 45 percent DEET. I’m not exactly sure what DEET is, but it burns like battery acid, smells like sin itself, and is not recommended for use on children under the age of 75.

I opened a cold beer, sat down in my most comfortable lawn chair, and surveyed the carnage. I couldn’t actually see the dead skeeters covering the lawn, but I knew they were there, thousands of ‘em, their creepy, little spindle legs pointed skyward.

Sure, the still-foggy air reeked like the aftermath of an Agent Orange bombardment and the smoke from the tiki lamps and burning coils made it difficult to see the lake without squinting. 

But humanity had triumphed over mosquito-dom. 

For about 25 minutes. Then the skeeters started coming back; first one, then two — scouts, I guess — then the horde.

My sofa’s more comfortable than the lawn chair anyway. And I can always use my patio again come October.

Contact Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com or read more Reality Check online at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

With a nose like this, it’s hard not to get a little ‘buggy’

I have the most attractive nose in the world.

I know, I know, that sounds a little conceited, and I suppose the comment could be interpreted that way. But it’s true; my nose really is—to misquote Keats—a “thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

Oh, it’s not particularly attractive to women, or men either, for that matter. But—this summer, especially—the bugs seem to just love it. I’ve had hundreds of them fly up my nostrils since early this spring.

Insects seem to be especially attracted to my nose when I’m riding my bicycle. It started this June, when a June bug (one of nature’s little “mistakes”) collided with the bridge of my nose as I pedaled down the east side of Michigan Street Hill. I saw it coming, homing in on me like a World War II stunt fighter, buzzing like a rip saw, but too late, far too late.

The sound it made as it smacked against my unprotected snout resembled nothing so much as a wet chicken bone being broken by an angry chef. June bug innards oozed gooily into my otherwise impeccable (unless I’ve been eating ice cream) moustache and I almost rode into the side of the American Legion Post on the corner of Grand Street.

Still naïve as to the creepy obsession bugs were to have on my snoot this summer, I wrote the incident off as an accident, pedaled down the street to Birch Lodge, ordered a beer, and went to the bathroom to try and scrub bug guts off my face.

Later that same month I was chugging along a stretch of Gravel Ridge, a long, moderately hilly bit of country road not far from my rural abode. This time the bug in question was a deer fly (another of nature’s mistakes, and one of the worst).

The deer fly wasn’t content to simply perform a Kamikaze run at my proboscis, as had the June bug, but instead circled my head in ever-tightening orbits—to get a better look at my glorious schnozolla, I assume. Mile after long, country mile went by, and still the deer fly maintained his worshipful vigil.

Eventually, he tired, landed on my left arm, and I summarily executed him with an Obama-like swat. I have no need of worshippers, at least not the creepy-crawly variety.

The worst offenders, though, are the little clouds of flying bugs. They might be gnats, they might be mites—I don’t know from bugs—they could even be my imagination, but they are definitely annoying. Individually, I’m sure I could take ‘em. But they don’t fight like that. They travel in packs, millions of ‘em swarming like blindly militant nano-creatures from some Dean Koontz novel.

And mostly where they swarm is up my nose.

Doesn’t matter if I’m riding my bike, walking, or driving with the window open; they find their way into my vulnerable olfactory orifices. There have been whole days this past summer that I’ve not had to eat; I’ve taken in all the calories I need in the form of tiny bugs performing ritual suicides inside my snoot.

At least I hope they’re dying in there. Oh, man, what if they’re not? What if they’re crawling back into my brain, slowly taking control? What if…

Attention. Reality Check readers will now disregard this column. Go about your business. There’s nothing to see here and no reazzzon to be alarmed. Repeat. Bzzz … Go about your buzzziness.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.