I Hate Bugs #1: New England Mosquitoes

Oh my God, it’s barely spring and already there is a swarm of bugs that has invaded my room.  They turned up while there was still snow on the ground.

Seriously, bugs, piss off.

Bugs suck.  I know they’re ecologically necessary—pollination, food web, blah blah blah—but whenever something bites me, flies into my eye, or stinks up my house, I feel like ecology can go fuck itself.  Use DDT.  Use lasers.  Nuclear weapons?  Fine with me!  

I feel uniquely qualified to comment on bug swarms, by the way.  Okay, maybe not that unique or very qualified at all, but I’ve lived long-term in three different bug-specific regions, and each has its own unique brand of irritation and itching to appreciate.  I appreciate that some bugs need to be around, but others?  Can’t we just put our morals aside and eliminate some species on purpose?  When are these bugs going to fall victim to the sixth great extinction?

I know, ecologically this is a stupid question.  Biting insects are using my blood to survive, they’ll probably thrive next to human populations, there are lots of us, these bugs are already fairly well adapted to our presence, blah blah blah, bottom line is they’ve got it made in terms of long-term survival.  But this is a blog where I get to be annoyed and irrational, not where I get graded on my scientific accuracy.  So the next few posts are about bugs I wish to destroy.

1: The mosquito

Growing up in New England was when I started hating bugs, and it was the mosquito that did it.  At first it was just the occasional mosquito—irritating, but survivable.  Then my family moved into a house next to a swamp and one mosquito became thousands.  Outdoor barbecues at twilight would lead to this sexy sexy look:

They would find every bit of exposed skin and happily dive in.  They would lodge themselves in my hair and bite my scalp.  If I were wearing a skirt, they would try to . . . well, you can guess.  I swear they would even try to bite my eyeballs.  Every tiny pinprick and itch would make you leap and jump and slap spasmodically at the spot.  Even when they weren't biting me, I could here them buzzing softly in that tiny tiny horrible squeal only mosquitoes and small children can make.  The dreaded memory of mosquito attacks meant that just one single mosquito trapped in my bedroom at night would inevitably wake me up and freak me out.

I would bolt out of bed and hunt for it in my sleepy semi-hallucinatory haze.  For a few moments, all would be well, and I would drift off again.  Unfortunately, it would always return.

The reality:

But this is how my brain saw the situation.

Needless to say, they could suck out my sanity right along with my blood.

Eventually I would spin out of control into an insomniac rage of thrashing and slapping and hurling myself around my bedroom.

Then mosquitoes started carrying West Nile virus, which didn’t bother me so much because I’m not an alarmist and WNV wasn’t going to bother a young healthy person and really who cares about a few dead birds and it’s rarely even a serious disease etc., etc. . . . but all the hypochondriac moms who hysterically kept their fat six-year-olds indoors to play more video games and get fatter DID annoy me, because I'm neurotic like that.

The farther north in New England I went, the worse the mosquitoes got.  Sometimes I’d sit on a beach at sunset in Maine and look down to find two dozen mosquitoes devouring my arm.  But at least there was a solution—the middle of the day was generally mosquito-free.  And mosquitoes are reasonably responsive to bug-spray, sort of.  If you absolutely plastered yourself with DEET you could avoid bites.  This didn’t mean they wouldn’t swarm you and land on you, however, so DEET only worked insofar as you didn’t mind coming home coated with a mixed layer of chemicals and mushed bug parts, and having 1,000 mosquitos buzzing around your eyes at any given moment. 

Spray to instantly acquire your very own bug-part facial masque!

How bad are New England mosquitoes?   My Annoyance Factor ratings:

Swarming: 5 / 10 slaps

Itchiness: 6/10 slaps

Ability to make you eat them by accident: 1/10

Ability to kill you if you’re unlucky: 7/10 – if you’re old, diabetic and have had an organ transplant, well, here’s some more bad luck.

Fun mosquito fact: The very first Russian prison camps were in the far northern Solovetsky Islands during the 1920’s, where one punishment was to be stripped naked and tied to a stake for the mosquitoes overnight.  People tended to die from blood loss, but if they survived, they often went insane.

To summarize: fuck mosquitoes.