A friend wrote today from Colorado with word that aerial spraying for mosquitoes had started out there in the mountains, which started me thinking of skeeters here, and skeeters past.  When it’s wet and warm and there’s standing water, you have skeeters.  We were a long time without rain here on Skinny Island, but in the past week we’ve had a good bit, the rain barrels are full to over-flowing, and breeding the little rascals.  The ones we get are more nuisance than anything else, ankle biters, late night intruders that buzz the ears and nip exposed veins on ears and between fingers when they slip in unnoticed when you pass through the screen door.  We are not concerned with disease, and generally pass it off as part of living here, and count ourselves lucky, especially when compared to our experiences in the Keys and Everglades.  There, throughout most of the day, through most of the year, though it is warm and wet always, there is generally some trade winds or breezes to keep the varmints at bay, but at dusk, and through the night, the wind almost always dies to nothing, and there is no netting, spray, or lotion, that can save you.  We have been driven to the very edge of complete insanity by huge gangs of  mosquitoes there.  We have worn full net suits and helmets.  We have cursed and cried.  We are still here.

We haven’t seen or heard them yet, but the county periodically sends out trucks to spray when the skeeters get bad, even out here on Skinny Island, where we are mostly (thankfully) forgotten.  It is an anemic, mostly invisible spray, which, environmentally speaking, is a good thing, we suppose, but we are unconvinced as to its effectiveness, and are nostalgically drawn to the way things used to be.

Growing up in Tampa, (the bay, the heat, the rain, the standing water,) we wistfully recall the “Skeeter Wagon.”  This was a large, cylindrical tank fixed to the back of a flat-bed truck, and said truck was driven, at a modest pace, up and down every street, emitting a thick, very thick, white fog, which spilled into the street behind, and flowed, like a San Francisco evening, into all lawns, alleys, and adjacent lungs.  But more than that, the appearance of the Skeeter Wagon was cause for joy and celebration.  On hearing its approach, we kids would spill out onto the curb to await its passing, in full view of and, one supposes, at least tacit indifference of our parents,  then dash into the street behind the truck, vying to see who could get deepest into the fog.  Lets see; eagles, pelicans, osprey were dying off at almost irretrievable rates from DDT, but not Post-War kids.  Ummm.   Or was there some other, untold, secret effect?  Still don’t know.  Social upheaval, civil rights, cell phones, Facebook?  Nixon, Reagan, the Tea Party?  I guess it depended on some deeper hard wiring how it effected us.  Probably it had no effect at all.  Anyway, the skeeters are still here, year after year, and so are we.  So is the fog.