First Mosquito Bite
I always find it difficult to identify the first mosquito bite of the year in Kansas City.
During spring I will get several bites, not from mosquitos but my paranoia about them will increase as spring progresses.
Similarly every fruit fly and small insect that flickers around the house is treated like a V-1 bomb with myself and the dog going into major alert status.
It’s all daft of course, because whatever about the odd lone advance assassin, when the mosquitos really do arrive for the season, there is no doubt.
This bite was received 48 hours ago. It’s 2 inches in diameter. Before the season is over I will receive bites that flare up to over 4 inches in diameter, being so big as to put pressure on nerves causing my arm, or leg, to tingle non-stop for up to 5 days.
It is what my life will be for the next almost 5 months.
The most of the supersized (god I love America) bites I’ve had at one time is 4, and the most of the ordinary nasty bites I’ve sported at the same time is about 50.
A bad night will see between 20 and 25 bites received, but even a 10-second dash to the bicycle on the porch will typically see me receive 3 or 4.
A couple of years ago I decided to stop using deterrent. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it does. Mosquitos are going to bite me no matter what I do. Deterrent causes them to not bite where I put the deterrent.
Try as I might when I apply deterrent all over I invariably miss a piece of my ear or eyebrow, and then that is where I get the bites like the one in the photo. Or that’s when I get bitten on the ends of my toes, or the soles of my feet.
Even a successful smothering of my body in deterrent will just cause bites through clothing, and anyway the deterrent typically gets rubbed off elbows and knees causing bites to then sprout there.
And yes, I will get bitten exactly where you really, really don’t want to get bitten. Goodness gracious.
So in a pact with the mozzies I don’t use deterrent and they in return only bite me on the outer parts of my limbs excluding the joints. Any transgression causes all out war, and, to be honest, madness.
Still, it is rather uncomfortable, so last year in a further act of martyrdom I decided to stop using all after-creams and ointments. No calamine lotion or cheap knock-offs for me. I would teach my body to live with the itch and learn to not let it bother me.
Last year was very itchy.
Please don’t tell me what works for you. I have eaten whole bulbs of garlic, whole boxes of matches, and bathed in Skin So Soft while making friends with bats. I don’t care what works for you. I don’t like you. And I’m leaving this country.
More in Mosquito Watch:
• #2 Ugly Start
• #3 Bites & Kills
• #4 Escalation
• #5 Neighborhood Chat
See Stuff Just As Self-Indulgent:
• Do You Have Snow in Ireland, Real Snow?
• Unseasonably Hot, I Mean Cold, in the Midwest
• Weird Weather of a Weekend
• Icicles
• It’s Bleedin’ Freezin’
• Dear Ireland, Kansas City is Hot
• I Built an Igloo
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
I had the same problem and nothing worked for me, either, Eolai. You just live in a miserable fucking place and you’ll sigh in relief when you leave. That whole skin so soft remedy was the biggest lie created by Avon ladies to move their shitty product.
Yes Medbh, I found out fairly quickly my first summer what rubbish the Skin So Soft option was. Normally that oily and stinky I’d expect to at least have some fun.
I have found the garlic route more effective than deet, because you don’t miss areas and it doesn’t get rubbed off, but you have to eat mountains of the stuff and every day.
Getting the sulphur directly from eating the tips of matches is effective also, but such behaviour strikes me as kind of a regression for us a species.
I’m terribly allergic to garlic so that remedy’s out, Eolai.
I know, it’s a strange one.
My younger sister has it as well.
If I eat it I get pale, dizzy, nauseous, and have explosive diarrhea.
Trust me, it’s not pretty.
I’ve never heard of the match tip solution, but you’re right it’s backward, and sounds dangerous. What does that do to your stomach and bowels? Gross.
I didn’t really need persuading on the not being pretty front - something about the word explosive.
If you find the matches dangerous you could always use safety matches
I’ve run into many people who are skeptical about my allergy and push and push for details like I’m making it up. So now I give the gory details up front. As for the matches, I just picture the sulfur burning a hole into my digestive track.
A short tem fix that helps is smoking, which they don’t like, and I do, but I’ll have to quit eventually.
Yeah, I’m not a smoker but I’ve found the smoke from log fires to be helpful, more so than the citronella things, but even sitting in the middle of a smoke cloud I’m likely to pick up about 20 bites.
Just one more summer to go.
The count down begins!
unsolicited advice warning:
it’s an allergy of sort, basically you have a hyper-histamine reaction, if you can tolerate it Benadryl should help and it will work best if you take it before you are bit. Otherwise you can use a topical benadryl and that will relieve some of the itching/swelling but not as much.
Thanks Sass. Alas I react badly to antihistamine. And topically afterwards on the monster bites Benadryl has had not a great impact.
Plus I tend to average 10 bad bites a day, only staying so low because after a 25-bite assault I tend to hide under a blanket in a closet for a day or two. So trying to take it before I get bit would mean drinking it as much as tea?
I think I made real progress last year with being able to cope with the itching, though I realize it’s quite possible that I didn’t in reality. But I do like telling myself I did.
“After-Bite” has been effective on some bites, but only if used within 2 or 3 seconds of being bitten. Thereafter it’s usless. And it’s tricky to apply when I’m usually being bitten by several mosquitos at once and trying to bat more away. So I’m trying the brain power (or delusion) again this final summer.
Jeez, you do have it bad. I hear northern california does not have bugs, but they don’t have the nice humidity either.
some folks are particularly tasty to mosquitos. when i was a child, my brothers and i would persuade my mom to sit on the porch with us in the summer twilight, because the mosquitos much preferred her to us. another reason for a mother’s day gift!
i’m curious, eolai. how do you get along with ticks and chiggers?
Oh Sassy it’s not that bad - I mean if I reacted to garlic with explosive diarrhoea, I’d be beside myself. Literally.
Martha, I am regularly used as mosquito bait myself, as I haven’t seen anybody attract them more.
I’d say I’m average to unremarkable with chiggers, and I now avoid all areas where ticks reign ever since a mass gruesome assault they made on me during my favourite five mile walk in Shawnee Mission Park a few years ago.
Mosquitos I hate because it’s war and they hurt me. But I must confess that at the end of summer when they are clinging on for life I have spared many of them in the house because I feel sorry for them.
Ticks, though, they disgust me. I will burn their remains, their whole families and their favourite books.
Dill Pickles!! Eat Dill Pickles or drink an ounce or so of pickle juice. They will leave you alone. Give it a try.
See you Thurs!
blink blink.
eating..match tips?
in kc i hope you at least dipped ‘em in barbeque sauce or something.
You are obviously very, very, very, very-very, very (very!) very sweet =]
Dan O - Hmmm. I already eat a lot of dill pickles - I’m told that’s odd for an irish man but I acquired the taste when cycling in central Europe. I’ll increase my uptake and report back. But just an ounce? I don’t believe that for a moment. I’ll try a pint. Put a Guinness head on that!
Pomegranate - You know I dip everything else in barbeque sauce and that never occurred to me!
Sheri - Thank you. And that’s why I take every bite, an affirmation of how sweet I am, as a boost to my self-esteem.
oh man, after this post i saw an Oprah advertisement for her show saying “Why do mosquitoes like some people more than others?!”
Please don’t tell me what works for you. Reverse psychology at its finest.
I got a job in the Camargue once. The mosquitoes there travel in swarms like locusts, except unlike locusts, they don’t move on. My cure was to get to hell out of there.
So come home, lad. The only place you’ll be bitten here is in the pocket.
I’ve held back on the story of the worst attack I sufferered, as in the most number of bites in just a matter of mnutes.
It wasn’t in Kansas City, but it wasn’t too far away. And it was very funny because of the extreme nature of it, because of my attempts to protect myself, because of the homemade remedy I was then given, but mostly because of the specific location where it occurred.
And I’m still not telling you any of those details - yet. Because it’s part of my Cycle Across America from a section that hasn’t been published yet - and I don’t want to ruin it for the four people who are following it.
Hi I was reading all the comments and like you I have a hate for mosquitos. When it starts to hit dark time in spring and summer here in Washington state. I loath hearing someone saying lets go outside and drive our RC’s or why don’t you start that bbq up. Mosquitos enter my mind, I just think about all the itching and how big the bites get. I literally will freak out if a bug flies by or I hear buzzing by my ear. I then with or without knowing will continue to swipe at my clothes making sure some undectected mosquito isn’t sitting and pondering when to bite. I notice that when I do get a bite I feel there little stinger going in. I might just be crazy though. (laughing) I swear I feel it go in like a tiny needle. Usually when I have that feeling I am right and there is a mosquito sucking away at my precious blood. I end up smacking or slapping myself hard to make sure they are dead. Continuing my dance of the mosquito.I call them Vampires. Lately though I have been getting bites in the day time. Usually in an area where it is shaded or have trees. Even when I go disc golfing there on my hands. I think I read somewhere that most of the time it is the females that are biting for the blood. They need the blood to produce eggs and feed their babies. =( What can one do considering this is a species of insect that has been around for millions of years. I at the moment am sporting two major bites on my wrist one from yesterday and one I got only twenty minutes before finding this forum. I have type O blood and wondered if that has anything to do with it. I know there are researched trying to find what is the chemical balance between people that makes the scent stronger than the other.
Well, all this sounds awful and just what I keep experiencing! Right now I am sitting at my desk with no shoes on as i cannot get a shoe on my right foot because a bloody mosquito has bit my foot….the one place I always forget to put repellent! My most extreme reaction went from the heel of my foot to the top of my knee, the swelling fully wrapping my leg, some crazy dr thought I had flesh eating disease! I live in BC, Canada and the mosquitos in the suburbs are HUGE and awful, but in the city apparantly non existent although when I am in the city they seem to find me! I have discovered over the years with myself and my 3 year old daughter having these severe reactions that there is nothing to prevent and stop it…if they want your blood bad enough they will bite you! I am an avid pickle eater myself and they still love me! Short of reguklar baths in DEET I think we are all out of luck! Good luck finding a place in this world without mosquitos! I hope you will share if you do!
I am convinced that mosquitoes are demons. Some people think I over react to the presence, or even possibility of the presence, of mosquitoes. But you know? When you’ve landed in the hospital due to too many mosquito bites, you smack at anything that flies.