We planned our Everglades visit for this time of year when those denizens of the wetlands are supposed to be at their least merry. Alas, due to budget cuts and staff reductions the mosquitoes never got that memo, and they are out in force day and night. When we loaded up our rig in January I brought along three bottles of bug dope. In eleven months, through thirty-four national parks and thirty-one states we used barely half of one bottle. We arrived in the Everglades last Friday and the remainder of all three bottles was gone Monday.
Although mosquitoes are active all day, it is after the sun dips below the horizon that the Hunger Games really begin. The activity inside the Bob T from sundown until bedtime would make an excellent reality show (working title: Muck Dynasty) as we flail and swing and swat endlessly with roughly a 30% kill rate.
SCENE 1, BEDROOM
JENNI: (smacking wall) Dang it!
KEVIN: Swing and a miss!
MOSQUITOS: (high-pitched humming) Ay, batta! batta-batta-batta! suh-WING, batta!
JENNI: (smacking wall) Dang it!
KEVIN: Steee-RIKE!
SCENE 2, KITCHEN; JOEL STALKING ABOUT, WHACKING WALLS AND CEILING WITH FLY SWATTER
JOEL: (mumbles) I know something you don't know. I am not left-handed!
(Switches hands and kills two with one whack) HA! (Maniacal laughter)
Fie, ye blood suckers! A pox on you carriers of West Nile virus! Forsooth and anon!
(We just started a little Shakespeare study last month)
I found a helpful poster at the campground bathroom with all kinds of things I never wanted to know about mosquitoes, and several things I cannot be convinced are accurate. For example, of the forty species of mosquito in the Everglades only thirteen bite humans (and in the low visitation months all 8 million of them are trying to suck a living out of 35 rangers and 300 tourists). Only females carrying eggs need a blood meal (abstinence education?). What said helpful poster failed to note is that no one should ever, under any circumstances, attempt to hike the trail around Eco Pond without being clothed head to toe and sprayed with Defcon Level 1 DEET. We tried to bike it and were met with a full assault that sent us pedaling furiously to the marina for another bottle of Off. Godspeed!
And so it is with this that we head for the Florida Keys, but tomorrow we will share about the less menacing aspects of the Everglades. Like 14-foot crocodiles and a tree that can kill you.
-Jenni