View from the North 40: Yes, again …

Mosquitoes.

I know, and I swore with actual swear words that I wouldn’t write about them this year, but these aren’t just any mosquitoes. These little guys are so strangely small and cunning that they were just asking for it.

These are pint-sized, skeeter-gnat-ninja warrior hybrids with a stealth mode and an extra pain-to-the-ounce bite.

Really, they are freaks of nature so small you can't hear their telltale hum coming at you and they can squeeze through the window screens. Yes, you read that right: There is no hope of protection from them. They will find you anywhere, and you won't know it until they got you.

Up to the grand ol’ First of July, I had been celebrating a virtually mosquito-free year, but they stepped up their game despite the heat and drought. This was just in time for them to be prepared to take full advantage of the big Fourth of July rains and subsequent heat which, incidentally did as much for my weeds.

With the mosquito numbers increasing exponentially, the weeds growing at an alarming rate, my crazy work schedule that forced me to spray weeds in late evening and my blissful ignorance that the mosquitoes were in-gathering to raid the nearest blood source, I was setting myself up to get tossed about in the perfect maelstrom of hungry feeders.

Unlike normal mosquitoes, these little suckers make very little sound and they’re almost too small to register as an actual object touching your skin. Like gnats, they’ve landed and started stabbing you, pumping you full of their painful bug spit and drawing the life-force from you before you even know you have a problem.

They are that good, in a naturally evil kind of way.

I would’ve run for cover, saved myself, but the weeds needed to be sprayed that day. You farmers know what I mean about taking care of plant business on the plants’ schedule.

I have a state sanctioned noxious weed on my place courtesy of some long ago abandoned vehicle once parked here. It’s like having a venereal disease of the land (not to imply that farmers or junk vehicle collectors know about venereal diseases just because they’re farmers or junkers, I’m just, y’know, digging this hole deeper, so … moving on).

The weeds need to be eradicated and I had spray from the county weed district office (which I was going to explain is like the public health office for vegetation, prescribing an "ointment” for what ails your good plants, but I won’t go there, and now I don’t know where to take this sentence, so …) blah blah blah and the stars aligned and I was spraying and the mosquitoes were feasting.

On me.

I was battling the mini-gnat-ninja-mosqitoes with traditional methods: slapping myself and flailing my arms about like someone working seriously hard at flunking semaphore school.

By the time I got home at sunset, I was a hot mess. Not the crazy sexy kind from music videos and movies though — just literally an overheated, disgusting mess of sweat, encrusted with the dried carcasses of a thousand mini skeeters — except the one balled up in the corner of my eye kept juicy because it was plugging up my tear duct.

And all I could think was that these little guys have redefined the phrase “silent, but deadly” — and they’re just as welcome to have around.

(I know I should drop it but, as a public service announcement, I just have to say that when you park a vehicle on your property you are play host to a little bit of every place that car has ever parked … just like the school nurse warned about in those safe sex lectures in high school. Think about it, you don’t know what kinds of diseases, or weeds, you’re inviting in at [email protected].)