The very first article I ever wrote for a newspaper started off with the tall tales I had been told about mosquitoes in the Yukon. It seems this past week those tall tales seem to be somewhat coming true in the Cariboo.
I drove out to Pressy Lake and interviewed some mushroom pickers and I honestly think the bugs were less bad there than at my house.
After my son goes to bed, my wife’s been sitting in the bed with him reading, just to swat the bugs (before the cold snap he was starting to look a little like he had chicken pox). He’d been having a particularly rough go of it anyways, with a wasp coming down the chimney and stinging him in the thumb.
The whole situation is something a bit from a nightmare. It’s turned our house into a bit of a prison. Our house is old, or at least old for what it is. The consequence of which is that I’ve duct taped the doors. The other day, in a frenzy from my car to the house, I’d forgotten I had duct taped them and took several shots trying to bust it open before I remembered and went in another way.
In another instance, I made it into the car but brought dozens of mosquitoes with me, spending a whole two hours of driving time swatting them before getting back to an acceptable level. It got a little gross actually with multiple dead mosquitoes on the windows, windscreen, dashboard, passenger seat and just about everywhere else. Although I’m sure my wife would tell you “a little gross” is a perpetual state for my car. In fact, the opulence of dead bloodsuckers is a good indication of my affinity for them.
My son, on the other hand, doesn’t care about the mosquitoes at all: he doesn’t scratch his bumps and doesn’t seem too bothered by them. He really only cared about one thing: going outside, something we haven’t been obliging much.
Much to my dismay, I had just recently bought some fruit trees and was forced to spend some time outside digging holes, mixing soil and watering them.
I’m pretty sure if the first plague had been mosquitoes, Moses would have been done with the Egyptians a lot faster. Which brings me back to the Yukon, in Egypt darkness for three days was considered a plague, up there that’s a miraculously short winter.
