Thursday, September 18, 2008

I don't believe it

We haven't really suffered from insect bites since we were badly bitten at the end of July.

Normally, once the breeding season is over,  mosquitoes leave you alone. Yesterday morning though I could feel the tell tale itches and the red wheals starting to appear. I've got a nasty one on my back, one on each arm, three on one leg and two on the other.  I quickly applied the cream we'd bought which soothed them well for the whole day.

However, the effects of the cream obviously wore off during the night. A mixture of itching and pain kept me awake for an hour or so in the early hours of this morning when I was too sleepy to go and find the tube of cream. I was sorely tempted to scratch them but I know that will only make them worse.

The annoying thing is I have no idea when I could have been bitten. I went outside the night before just to close the shed and lock the gate so I can only assume it was then. Either that or the buggers have started to bite in the daytime.  I was only outside for a few minutes  the night before.  If it was then, the mossies must have been desperately lying in wait to ambush me. Perhaps they have been driven from the campo by the little yellow plane that has been spraying the orange groves for the last week or so.

We're unlikely to to get bitten during the  night because we have mosquito blinds on all our windows which we religiously pull down. Our daughters have just returned from Cyprus where the younger one was bitten. She couldn't sleep with the air conditioning switched on so she slept with the window open with neither blinds nor a mosquito repellent in the room.

The pain and the misery almost makes you  long for  winter when the flies, wasps and mosquitoes all go to sleep. Thankfully it is short lived and I will have forgotten about it tomorrow.

No comments: