18.12.09

Mosquitoes love me.

Backstory
Mosquitoes have always loved me. Because I am sweet.

When I was five, my family moved to Southern California for the summer. There was a mosquito nest in my mattress. I think you can guess what happened.

When I was nine, my family went to Florida for spring break. Florida is a swamp, infested with mosquitoes. I was eaten alive.

Infested with mosquitoes
Do you know where else is a swamp? New Zealand. There are 16 species of mosquitoes in NZ. By this, I mean there are a lot of mosquitoes.

When I first got to NZ, Adam and I went camping. I got a couple of mosquito bites. No big deal, right?

I didn’t scratch those first mosquito bites at all. But they swelled up so much that I couldn’t walk. I had to go to bed for two days. For mosquito bites. That was before the child was born, when I could still get away with that sort of thing.

My life with mosquitoes
Apparently, the mosquitoes in NZ love my fine vintage of Northern Hemisphere blood. Or I don't have the right antibodies. I guess mosquitoes are my Kryptonite.

Now we have mosquito nets over our beds. They look beachy and romantic. And we usually keep the windows closed at night.

I bathe in insect repellent.

I have learned that it doesn't matter if I scratch the bites or not. They still get painfully swollen. As with so many other things in life, there is no need to be a martyr. I can scratch my bites until they bleed (sorry, that sounds a bit emo).

Anti-histamine is my friend. And winter. When all the mosquitoes die.

Photo credit: Te Ara

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Edited to add. I'm getting invisible comment spam that I can't delete. Has this happened to anyone else?

8 comments:

Sarah said...

Euch! My poor daughter Charli gets attacked by them big time too and I am now very well prepared with repellent at all times - as she's soooo grumpy for about a week when she has bites.

Horrible, nasty things. Sounds like you are well prepared and the mosquito nets do sound very romantic.

Caffeinated Weka said...

As a child, I was the tastiest treat for mosquitoes for miles around - they flocked to me, yet left my family and younger brother almost unscathed. Things are a little better now that I am older, but I have more than my fair share of mosquito scars. I am going out to a chemist today to buy some Rid to take away on holiday next week - I'd tried soooo many brands, and this is one of the only ones that does its jobs without making me smell like a toxic chemical factory.

Secret Mom Thoughts said...

Mosquitoes love me too. I read once that mosquitoes prefer blue eyed light hair people better to bite. I'm not sure why or how they can tell.

Anonymous said...

I've heard that if you take garlic pills, they'll stay away from you. Little vampires. But then again, people might stay away from you too!

Avalon said...

I have to say - I usually dont get bitten - they hate my blood :) Did get an awful lot of Ant Stings in Fiji though - which was bad enough.

Vit b12 (I think its 12 anyway - my be B Complex - but Simillium in Welligton should know) is said to change the blood in a way that keeps them away - you can get it by taking brewers yeast - or apparently eating Marmite. Yuck!

And no - not getting any invisble spam on my blog - Im using Akismet as a spam filter if that helps.

Fragrant Liar said...

I love when mosquitos die. It's cause for celebration.

How is your spam invisible? You should be able to delete any comments you don't want on the site.

Madame DeFarge said...

My husband has the same problem. I reckon they like English blood. I rarely have any bites, but then being Scottish, I'm probably immune.

Juli said...

FL, I was getting notified by email that a (spam) comment had been left on an old post. When I went to the post to delete, there was no comment there. I googled invisible comment spam, and yeah, it's out there. Evil.

My work-around is now comment moderation on older posts. Hopefully, that will be enough to stop them in their tracks.