Bugs

Apologies to those of you who are squeamish about creepy-crawlies, but I am returning to the theme. They have been a feature of the past week or two. The fireflies were a high point; it's been downhill all the way since.

First off, I have discovered that I am sensitive to mosquito bites. Everyone seems to have an allergy these days, so I think I could say this is my one. I’ve had mosquito bites before which become the size of a 50p piece and a bit puffy, but we’re talking different league here. The mosquito here asks “do you want me to supersize that?” as he bites, and my body, without my permission, says “oh yes please”. The bite becomes the size of a beer mat, and then it starts changing shape and moving in a rather intriguing way. Up an arm, round the side of a leg, morphing into less tidy shapes as it spreads over the contours of muscle and joint. It’s red and hot and swollen and angry. The only saving grace is that it isn’t particularly itchy (although if I confess that, I will obviously receive less sympathy), and I am relieved that they’re not spider bites. The first bite had me worried, especially when a very friendly and helpful pharmacist used words like "venomous", and told me to look out for evidence of tracking up a blood vessel. But I have now caught a mozzy in action, which is useful diagnostic work on the one hand, but on the other, not a very cheering prospect for the summer. There are sprays for yourself and for your back yard, and you can eat lots of garlic, but the bottom line is cold compresses and anti-histamine tablets which give me a sort of brain fog for about 3 days per bite. The alternative is never setting foot outside my house, car, or destination, which isn’t very appealing, although it would give me a real flavor of life as an average Midwesterner – ouch, did I say that?

Next,10-yo has been doing a Young Scientist's Camp each morning this week. This involved exploring in woods and ditches. Good childhood stuff. He came home and said "you've got to do a tick check on me". Once I'd finished wearying patient Husband with jokes about putting any ticks I might find in boxes, and whether they'd be ticks or checks once in the box, I realised I didn't know what I was looking for in any case. I have people I can ring up and ask these things, so I did that. Then I looked up the information on the internet. This is always a mistake. in just a few minutes, you can go from hearing that ticks are really nothing much to worry about, to knowing that they can carry Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. You can see what a Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever rash looks like. You can learn that most cases respond to antibiotics, but that 3% don't.

This is one of the difficult things about living abroad. You don't build up knowledge gently over many years. You have to get it brutally all at once. You don't have the backdrop of years of plucking ticks out of scalps, and of your mother plucking ticks out of yours, to give you a reasonable perspective in which to put the very occasional horror story. You can't download that kind of knowledge from the computer. Human memory files work in a rather more cumulative way. I'm not sure you can rely on finding short cuts.

So you can see why I am fed up with the bugs here. I'll have to make sure I go and watch my friends the fireflies again this evening to redress the balance a little.