Mosquitoes

I was working on some trails on Thursday and I was amaze by the volume of mosquitoes in the area. It was like Alaska. I had been warned to bring repellant, but that was the only thing I forgot to bring. A friend had some but not nearly enough to bathe in.

I sliced through a cloud of them with my chainsaw and must have gotten some of them, but they came in an endless stream. I then realized that mosquitoes probably don’t like gasoline very much so I spilled some fuel on my hands and rubbed it on my shirt and my neck and face. It worked pretty well.

I was reminded of the mosquitoes in Canada in May where we would wear mosquito nets and gloves to keep safe from mosquitoes and black flies. We could see clouds of them moving across the lake toward us. We would slather ourselves with 6-12 and light punks and cigars. When the mosquitoes arrived the fishing got better. It was a trade- off.

Thursday there was no trade-off. It was all mosquitoes and no fish. It’s a wonder anything can survive them in the wild.