Skeeter bites!

One of the things I really like about the Pacific Northwet, or at least my tiny corner of it, is the absence of mosquitoes. If I see a dozen mosquitoes in a summer, it's a bad year. So far the count is 4, so it is looking like a fairly average year. But before you think this is heaven, we have spiders like you wouldn't believe -- come autumn there will be webs everywhere outside, with a harmless but big and very ugly spider in each.

And though the cool nights and frequent winds in the campground near Crater Lake last weekend kept their mosquito (and biting fly) population down, when it was hot and quiet I learned again the value of mosquito repellent. Still haven't used up the bottle bought for the trip to India in 2006, though.

So I got bitten a number of times. Hmmm, does this stuff have expiration dates? Anyways didn't think about it again until my mid-year review with my American supervisor (I have a German supervisor too but that's another story), when suddenly he remarked, "You're bleeding!" And so I was -- one of the bites had opened up. Is it age and thinning skin? But I jokingly attributed it to the high blood-pressure stress of the review. (We both knew it wasn't.)

But I remember the prevalence of Midland's mosquitoes in May or early June. My father's nemesis even more than mine.

I stepped out of the house one day in '67 or '66 or so and thought there was something wrong with the power transformer because I could hear it humming. Only problem was that the power lines and transformer were not on our street; digging deep into old memories I think they ran down the street on the other side of the block. In any event, I looked up and saw a huge cloud of mosquitoes hovering a dozen or two feet up. I don't remember what I did except to vacate the locale as quickly as I could.

Note to self: bring fresh mosquito repellent to the reunion. Don't want to bleed all over everyone.