Mosquito musing in Malta

I woke up this morning scratching a mosquito bite on my ankle.

The last thing I remember before falling asleep was the sound of the fogger on the city truck driving by the house.

I usually get up and shut the windows when I hear the truck approaching, but last night I was just too tired. And a little Malathion never hurt anybody did it?

When I was a kid in Indiana we used to chase the spray truck through the neighborhood on our bicycles, disappearing into the dense white cloud when we neared the truck. It was great fun and no one ever suggested it wasn’t a good idea.

The insecticide coming out of the fogger on the back of the truck that cruises the streets of Malta every evening is barely visible. The chemical smell, however, is the same.

For three or four months every year we battle mosquitoes. They’re worse some place than others. Before moving to the Hi-line the worst mosquitoes I’d ever seen were above timberline. The first time I ever wore a head net was while fishing Farley Lake in the Beartooths where the brook trout bit as eagerly as the mosquitoes.

Fortunately, those high-altitude insects have a short run. By late summer they were always gone.

That’s not the case up here on the prairie. By late summer the mosquitoes are just getting started, and there are often a few left for the opener of pheasant season in October.

No fan of bug dope, I instead adjust my wardrobe, foregoing shorts and T-shirts for long pants and long sleeved shirts.

Proper attire helps, but I still get bitten around the edges. I’ve usually got a bite on my wrist where the sleeve stops, another on my lower back because my shirt pulled up when I bent over, and I’ve always got one or two on my forehead just below my cap line.

I try not to let them bother me, but they always do. A serial scratcher, I just can’t leave them alone, and I tend to turn the smallest red bump into a festering sore.

While I may only suffer a handful of bites all summer, by September I’ve begun to resemble a leper.

The bite on my ankle that woke me this morning certainly won’t be my last. At least I hope it won’t. What with Zika and West Nile entering the fray, who knows?

I suppose I should simply be thankful I woke at all.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].