Smoke Monster

Last Summer, the mosquitoes were pretty bad. Not a single night passed without finding myself under attack by squadrons of the little bastards, buzzing me for hours. Rachel would awake at 2a.m. to the sound of me smacking at the walls or ceiling, cursing and frothing at the mouth, trying to squash a single mosquito- a fruitless exercise, since there were always about a million waiting to take her place. I really thought I would go insane by the time Autumn rolled into this part of the peninsula. When the harvest season finally did arrive, the mosquitoes missed their cue and lingered into November.

This year hasn't been as bad (so far!) even though we have had what seems like far more rain than the summer of '07. The lower bug-bite count might have something to do with the door-to-door mosquito fogger. I never actually saw the guy, but he was busy in our neighborhood, carrying some kind of four-horsepower engine attached to a supply of winged-insect-apocalypse. I love that guy.