Friday, June 08, 2007

Mosquitoes in the Closet

I am from South Georgia, below the gnat line, so I know about bugs. In addition to the non biting but excessively worrisome gnat, I have first hand experience with fire ants, ticks, yellow jackets, love bugs, palmetto bugs, chiggers and ear-buzzing baddie, the mosquito. The tropical climate in St. Croix means no winter and year-round mosquitoes.

The local paper, the Avis, publishes health warnings about the mosquito-born aliment dengue fever. I’ve notice flyers in local businesses announcing dengue fever prevention methods and highlighting symptoms of infection.

I knew about malaria, but I never hear of dengue fever. My fears of dengue fever prompted my husband to serenade me (over and over again) with his original composition “Dengue Fever” sung to the tune of the theme song of that Spike Lee movie Jungle Fever.

“mama got dengue fever, papa got dengue fever,”

In addition to feasting on any portion of exposed skin, a band of mosquitoes had, until recently, taken up residence in our closet. Why the closet, I can’t say. There’s no standing water in the closet and we (the mosquitos’ main food source) don’t spend ample time in the closet. Maybe they chose to congregate in the dark amongst our clothes and plot attacking us in our bed whilst sleeping? Who knows the deep murmuring minds of mosquitoes?

“Chuck got dengue fever, Gus got dengue fever. . .”


Our early combative efforts against the closet dwellers consisted of guerrilla style fumigations: fling open the closet door, spray the swarm, jump back and quickly slam the door. One day while house cleaning, I took them on full force. I closed myself and my wind-tunnel vacuum with hose attachment in the closet and attempted to suck them to their deaths. I felt somewhat Jediesque as I swung my suction-powered saber at the X-wings dive bombing me. After about fifteen sweat-filled minutes, I ceased. I found a number of the dusty storm troopers’ corpses in the filter compartment.

“he got dengue fever, she got dengue fever, everybody got dengue fever. . .”

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