Image by Gravitywave via Flickr

If it’s not birds, it’s mosquitoes. The near constant rain has resurrected a long dormant type for double teaming duty with the regular bloodsuckers we normally have. The new variety though isn’t nocturnal. It likes sunshine too making it impossible to avoid being bitten.

The Fort’s soccer fields and playgrounds practically pulsate with them. Dee and I have been swarmed twice in the last week and it makes me wonder how people coped back in yore without pesticide deterrents.

By “swarmed” I mean literally covered. Remember those commercials where the guy sticks his arm into an aquarium filled with the little pests and it disappears under the creatures. That kind of swarmed.

I don’t even have to be bitten to itch. For some reason, just contact sets my skin aflame with intense itching that last for about 10 or so minutes after.

And with West Nile and encephalitis being a mosquito carried threat anymore, it’s hard to shrug the plague off as just a summer side-effect to be endured. It also makes me feel a bit guilty leaving Dee to fend at soccer camp this week, slowly eaten by mosquitoes all day.

Summer in Alberta is not as awesome as years past.

Related articles

• Mosquitoes swarm after record rain (cbc.ca)
• BCCDC: warm weather drives mosquito numbers up, some may carry West Nile virus (globaltvbc.com)
• The Best Ways to Soothe Mosquito Bites (omaymen.wordpress.com)
• Has Edmonton stolen Winnipeg’s mosquitoes? (ctv.ca)
• Season’s first Eastern equine encephalitis-bearing mosquitoes found in Bridgewater (boston.com)