Skeeters...

Rumor has it that mosquitoes get larger and more ferocious the farther one travels north, so that by the time you arrive in Lake Woebegon, in the fine state of Minnesota—where some say the mosquito is the unofficial state bird—the insect might be large enough to carry off a small child.

Fortunately, the mosquitoes here in the lower Midwest are just your common, average-sized variety, unless of course they happen to be carrying West Nile virus, but they still seem pretty ferocious to me, and relentless, and they certainly can still suck blood. I can’t off hand think of anything that will galvanize a person faster than that high-pitched z-z-z-z-z-z-z whine in the vicinity of one’s ear.

I seem to attract them in the early morning as I sit to work at my computer.

That smear of red is what is left from one didn’t live to see another day. I wonder if a CSI person would be able to deduce where that blood on my copyholder came from, and whose blood it is....

At any rate, I have a quarter-sized mosquito bite on my leg and it doesn’t bother me too much as long as I don’t accidentally scratch it.

But what is making my skin crawl just a bit is what Richard found yesterday. To keep the ants out of the cat’s food, we put the bowl inside a larger saucer filled with water.




Richard usually changes the water once a week – it is part of his list of things to do. I assume he changed the water last week, all I know is that when he went to change the water yesterday, he was rather alarmed to see mosquito larvae squirming around in there. The idea that we might be breeding mosquitoes in our house gives me the whillies.