The Lunch Counter of Me

I’ve been at my desk all day.  It was just me in here.  Not another sentient soul that I could discern.  Now, later, it’s coming up on eleven at night at I’m being hunted from above and below.  I’m hyper sensitive all of a sudden to all the hairs on my body.  “What was that?”  “Is that?”  “Could that?”  Swat.

Who let all these mosquitos in?  There must be a half a dozen in there at the lunch counter of me. Most flies aren’t out to bite you.  Their quick and they can land here and there with impunity, gathering up little bits of who-knows-what to fuel themselves up for the next dash to somewhere else.  If they’re on me they are presumably getting a bit of salt from my sweat, which is disgusting to consider, but only so much of drag.  I can rationalize giving freely of my sweat.

No benign rationalization can warm you up to a mosquito.  They are looking for the most inconspicuous place they can possibly land to gently position themselves, insert their nasal sword and extract my blood.  I can’t condone this any more than I can condone a mugger.  If you try to do that and indeed, even if you don’t, I will kill you, because I know what you are.

This is the final frontier on or damn near to it on the pro-life agenda.  These things are out to eat of me.  They fly fast but not so fast to gain your respect, like a fly.  They navigate in odd, looping patterns that seem drunken, and while not especially predictable, anyone can have a fair shot at swatting one. 

It’s my older daughter that is adamant, about not killing them (or anything.)  It’s a proud, Jain-like tradition.  But while I could perhaps pass the Jain test with most animals, I fail, adamantly when it comes to the summer’s limitless supplies of these wispy little vampires.  They want my blood.  They can’t have it. 

I just went up the stairs to pass the phone to someone and I passed four or five on my way.  Half of which are now part of the paint on the wall and the other few have moved on to safer ground on the ceiling.  I grabbed hold of the faux tennis racket, cum swing-able electric chair device we have up there.  It has a light, which was on and I just tried to use it to knock off a trio that were over by my window.  They darted off and I swung after them, connecting, surely, but . . . no grisly sound.  It would appear that I need to charge up the frying pan first.  In the mean time, as I type, my leg hairs are all tingling.

“Clap.”  Another hungry mite has ceased to fly.