I so want to be out on the patio this evening, enjoying the cool, evening breeze that’s finally come along to reward us all from enduring the long, hot, muggy day, but going out there right now would be like diving into a swimming pool filled with Bowie knives packed together so tightly that the ends of their blades all point up. Why? Because we’ve had so much rain over the past three days it’s brought the mosquitoes out in swarms that settle on every square inch of exposed flesh as soon as you step into the open from the shelter of your back door.

My Darling B went out to her garden just before dinner, determined to bring in some leafy greens for our table and as many pea pods as she could pick and take to work for lunch tomorrow. She lasted about ten minutes. Safely watching her from the inside of our screened-over dining room window as she did the happy slappy dance, I was truly impressed that she lasted so long. She must have collected at least fifty bites in that short time, five every minute, or I’m a lying bastard.

So there’ll be no kicking back in the yard this evening, no matter how much I’d like to slouch down into one of our camp chairs with a tall, cool mojito in hand and watch the evening sky fade from blue to indigo to black. I’d be bled dry so quickly that the most accomplished medical team on earth, armed with a bottomless blood supply, would be powerless to revive me.

I probably bring this up every time I start talking about mosquitoes, but here I go again: Are you old enough to remember the days when the city crew would drive a truck through your neighborhood with an industrial-strength fogger mounted on the back, spewing a thick, white cloud of insecticide over all the yards and houses, and all the children would drop whatever they were doing to chase the truck and dance through the lethal cloud as if it were the most benign plaything ever? I still haven’t developed any malignancies that I know of from doing that, have you?

And another thing: When a mosquito gets into my bedroom at night, why’s he so fascinated by my ears? He’s got the whole, great big house to fly around in, and yet the one place he wants to be more than any other is in my left ear, and sometimes in my right ear. He’s not trying to bite me, because guy mosquitoes don’t do that, so it’s not like I should even be on his radar. Does he think my ear is the way out?