Catch it, kill it!

Today I committed mass murder. Now, before you start calling the authorities, or start referring to me as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or another dictator of your choice let me explain. The murder was of mosquitoes, and maybe an innocent spider or two. That I regret a little bit, but not the mosquitoes, no siree Bob. 

The devilish blood suckers

I suffer mercilessly at the hands (or rather the snouts) of mosquitoes and other such little biting critters. My legs look like a dot to dot puzzle and seemingly the mosquitoes have tried to give me the gift of an anklet in bites. Needless to say that the gift is seriously unwanted. The thing I find most frustrating about getting bitten is not the incessant itching that happens the moment I decide to go to bed or the potential for disease, although admittedly both are highly unpleasant, it’s the patronising tone in which others (generally white ‘worldly’ travellers) ask “Don’t you sleep in a mosquito net?”

A girlie pink version of what I sleep in..

Well, yes I do, I’m not an idiot. I’ve also tried using DEET, the Avon bug spray, garlic, vitamin b tablets, citronella candles and mosquito coils but nothing works. The blighters are determined to get me, and so they do. It’s also a myth that the mosquitoes only really come out at dawn and dusk. There are fewer in the day but at night they are everywhere long after the moon has arisen. It seems that nowhere is sacred either, not content to feast upon arms and legs they bite the soles of my feet, underneath my toes, my bottom and most annoyingly the underside of my chin.

So yes, I may feel a bit guilty about the few innocent spiders that died at my hand today. However, whilst I was washing the dead mosquito bodies away in my bathroom, where with the use of a little DOOM I had managed to turn the white toilet seat black, I felt no remorse. I’ve had malaria once thank you very much and while it might be a dog eat dog world I’m not ready to accept that it’s a mosquito eat man one!