Summertime

Now that it's finally not raining all the time, we've had some lovely weather. I got to enjoy a sunny 78º midwestern summer day today. Frodo had a baseball game this evening - actually, he had two as we are getting near tournament season. The first game they easily won. It was delightful soaking up the sunshine, a light breeze blowing just enough to keep us from feeling too warm. The second game, they still won, although not as easily. The sun started sinking in the sky and out they came. The mosquitoes.

Oh. My. Goodness. I cannot believe all the mosquitoes. Granted, we were expecting them once the rains finally stopped. We have mosquitoes every year. They aren't unusual. And after flooding rains, we get what is termed as a "flood hatch" - a huge explosion in the mosquito population a week or two after the heavy rains. I guess the unusual amount of rain we had contributed to the unusual number of mosquitoes we now have. Locally, the public health department uses traps to monitor the number of mosquitoes in the area. About 10 days ago, they had low numbers - something like 50 mosquitoes per night in the traps. Recently, they are getting nearly FOUR THOUSAND mosquitoes per night in the traps. That means we've had an 800 fold increase in our mosquito count this past week. That's a lot of 'skeeters!

One positive in all this - the floodwater mosquito is NOT the one that carries West Nile Virus. I'll keep reminding myself of that as I'm taking iron supplements for all the blood loss.