The Mosquito Ghost

I’ve been waiting for this all year and finally it is here – mosquito season! [Insert maniacal laughter here.] I’m not kidding. All winter there has been virtually nothing to struggle against, no adversaries worthy of a good fight. A little cold and snow? Bah! The mosquito, however, lends just the sort of challenge to keep a girl on her toes, to make her feel alive… even if she’s hiding under a hunk of cloth.

I’d packed this tropical print fabric thing to be used as a multi-purpose sheet/towel/picnic blanket. Little did I know how truly useful it would become. If only it hadn’t taken me so long to figure it out.

After having been used as a sheet and then as a towel, it was draped over my shoulders to dry. I pulled it tight on the back of my neck and flapped it about like wings making an anti-mosquito breeze. It helped. [Insert beatific smile here.] Unfortunately my arms got tired before the mosquitoes did. I would have tried to outpace them, create my own breeze, but this was the first trip upon which my knees rebelled.

If necessity is the mother of invention is adaptation her bastard son? Don’t answer that. I’m not interested in the marital status at the time of conception. In this day and age it’s irrelevant. Anyway… having found one way to foil those blood thirsty little bastards, more ideas followed.

Next I wrapped my head – stroke of genius that was. No mosquitoes could get at the back of my neck or at my ears. I was in hiker’s heaven. A few minutes of flapping hadn't dried the towel/sheet/picnic blanket/mosquito guard sufficiently, so it was a little stinky and sticky but hey that’s what we go in the woods for right? Too suffer, to tough it out, to appreciate that we have large temperature controlled boxes with window screens waiting for us at home.

My knees, being the treacherous beasts they were, required a short rest. With my handy dandy no-nonsense mosquito foiler I sat right down where I pleased and pulled the damned thing over my head. Didn’t need to see the trail just to sit there.

With the verdant greens of summer under my rump and the hot sun shinning through the tropical hues, drying the musty cloth on my head, I could hear the mosquitoes angrily buzzing about me in a small swarm but I couldn't feel them biting. I must admit I was feeling more than a little smug.

[You noticed did you? Very perceptive. Ok, I admit it. I did not take these pictures on the trail. Camera trouble. Besides who wants to post photos of their sweaty selves that scream, "I haven't slept well or showered in days"? It's best for everyone really that I did a little dramatic reenactment. This last shot just shows the utter extreme versatility and never ending usefulness of the tropical print wrap-thing. See, if the mosquitoes tuck tail and run you can use at as a fashionable accessory.]