Arctic Mosquitoes

By Stephen in Insects, Nature, Outdoors

Last night I had one of those sock-for-a-brain moments where I left the windows open, the curtains drawn and the lights on. All those things are quite harmless in themselves, but when executed in unison, you will be lucky if you don’t have night bugs tapping against the screen of your laptop and against the glass of your lights for the rest of the night.

But the worst part is that sickening noise that starts up about five minutes after you jump into bed, turn the lights off and pull up the covers.

“eeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE” (sounds like a ghost story)

Mosquito.

You wait till the noise gets to a crescendo, then pauses, then you pause, slap yourself, and the noise goes away. You think you killed the wretched thing, only to hear the noise again right when you are about to drop off to sleep. You switch on the light and of course it isn’t there. I’m sure they must use mosquitoes as torture methods in some countries.

When I was a kid and used to read through the towering stacks of Reader’s Digest magazines at my grandparents’ house. I would usually skip to the “Laughter: The Best Medicine”, but one particular article took my interest one day…

Arctic Mosquitoes

Where on the Earth does one find the heaviest concentration of mosquitoes? A tropical jungle? A hot festering swamp? Wrong. Experts say it’s the Arctic tundra – mosquitoes can appear in swarms so thick they can turn the sky gray. And in the Arctic, these little flying predators can appear explosively – billions of them in a single day – bringing misery to all around them.

There was a story in the article about some guys who were camping in the Arctic region one night when suddenly, from out of nowhere, comes a black plague of mosquitoes baring nothing but evil tidings of woe and despair. The hikers had to hurriedly erect their tent and dive for cover. The mosquitoes pelted against the fly of the tent for what seemed like an eternity, and the poor guys spent the better part of half an hour tracking down and killing every last one that somehow made it inside with them.

You would be doing well not to have a nightmare about it.

So, sorry insect lovers, but this is how I prefer my mosquitoes…