SKEETERS!

(INTRO)

Hello, this is lostnbronx.

I live in the high desert of Arizona; not a place you'd normally think 
of as being "buggy", you know?  I mean, outside of scorpions and spiders 
and Africanized honey bees that'll swarm ya just for looking at 'em.  
And yes, I know the former two are not insects, but we'll get along 
better if you aren't pedantic.  Run with me on this.

Before we moved here, from the Northeast with its impressive mosquito 
populations and accompanying encephalitis scares, I figured life on the 
small scale, as it were, would be at a minimum.  I figured termites.  
Fire ants, if we were unlucky.  Maybe a Tarantula Hawk Wasp or 
two...they can be pretty.  You know, desert stuff.  Well, those animals 
are all here, but they don't grab your attention right away.  No, no.  
Think cowboys.  Cattle country...sorta...used to be.  Not so much now.  
But people sure like their horses here, and horses get you...that's 
right, flies.  I'm actually an insect fan.  I find them really 
interesting.  But I don't like 'em roaming around freely in my home.  
And I don't like 'em in my face.  If you have a neighbor with any kind 
of livestock, except for chickens and the like which can actually keep 
the bug population down, then you know what those poor kids on the "Feed 
The Children" commercials late at night are going through.  I mean it's 
just disgusting.  The flies are everywhere, certain times of the year.  
And it really gets me, because people hereabouts are very into their 
barbecue, you know?  They're out there cooking their steaks and stuff.  
They love that nice mesquite smell, that juicy grilled flavor, and 
cooking in the great outdoors and all that.  So what if there's a few 
bugs around?  No big deal.  That's nature right there.  The way food was 
MEANT to be cooked.  Well, for cryin' out loud, the flies were JUST 
snackin' on dog crap, and they're landing on the food!  Is it just me?!  
You wouldn't lick farmer's boots!  Why is it okay to eat something a fly 
was walking all over?  Because they're small?  Because you can't 
actually SEE the crap?  Does that mean that if you close your eyes it's 
okay to go for the farmer's feet?!  Of course not!  When you start 
connecting all the dots, the "great" starts slinking away from the whole 
"cooking in the great outdoors" thing.  You start eating a lot of frozen 
pizzas.

Anyway, the flies are not the worst of it.  The first summer we were in 
our new house turned out to be the scheduled coming out party for the 
periodic cicadas that happen to live in the area.  Ki-kay-da, si-kah-da.  
Tomayto, tomahto.  You know the critter I mean.  And it's just like they 
say: there's peace and quiet, and then Holy Crap!  Within a couple hours 
you've got thousands of the things right outside your window, singing 
and buzzing and making the most earsplitting racket you ever heard.  I 
started wearing ear plugs at night, because, they only have a week or 
two to perpetuate the species, you know, it's love on a tight schedule, 
and they're workin' it like a call girl on the corner.

Now again, I think insects are cool.  But you gotta understand, my wife 
grew up in the projects in the Bronx, and she's got this thing about 
cockroaches.  And New York roaches, I gotta tell ya, they must import 
'em from the tropics, because some of them are just huge.  And the 
really big ones there, they call them water bugs, but, you know, we're 
NOT talking about those cute little Hans Brinker skating guys you see on 
still pools in bucolic groves, no.  These are massive brown 
"stomp-on-'em-hear-'em-crunch-and-they-still-walk away" kind of guys.  
At my old job, they used to set off the mousetraps, no lie.  It was, 
ugh.  Anyway, the cicadas are big.  And brown.  And they crunch under 
your feet as you walk to the car, 'cause, again, they're all over.  And 
Mrs. Bronx was having flashbacks and nightmares.  Now, I thought, at 
first, these cicadas were on the four-year cycle, but we passed that 
mark, and they didn't return.  I figure they must be on the seven-year 
cycle then, which means we can expect them next year some time.  Maybe 
we'll throw a party.

And what ABOUT the damn bees out here, anyway?  Remember when the whole 
killer bee scare came around in the United States back in the...what was 
it, the Seventies?  If you're too young for that, or if you're from a 
country that had the good taste to pass up that particular piece of 
mouth-frothing, no worries: you didn't miss much.  But IF you can 
remember it, do you recall when there were all these cheap-ass movies 
being made about massive swarms of deadly bees descending on cities and 
towns and wiping everybody out?  Sometimes they had them carrying 
plagues too, just to add to the fun.  Well, there were also a couple 
horror/fantasy type movies back then that more-or-less had the plot in 
common of some human woman standing in for the bee queen, and all the 
bees would follow her will, or how the bees themselves had to choose 
some cute young girl to replace the evil old hag who was dying.  Now, 
how exactly the reproductive aspect of life in these hives was supposed 
to go down was never made clear, but, whatever, they didn't HAVE to make 
sense.  So, there was always a scene in each of these movies when an 
unsuspecting victim walked into a room to find the place just filled 
with bees.  I mean they're all over the windows, the walls, the floor, 
and they're flying through the room like it's free swim night at the 
public pool.  Usually, this is the last scene that victim has in the 
film.  Two years back, I had the distinct pleasure of living that scene 
out in real life.  Luckily, my agent was able to arrange for me to have 
a few more scenes in this live production, so I guess I was the B-list 
protagonist this time around, pun intended.  Either way, I open the door 
and BAM!  The friggin' things are EVERYWHERE!  They're all over the 
walls and floor, and especially around the window, which was closed.  
And then they're on me!  I got a little nervous.  (PAUSE) OKAY, I 
screamed and ran like a whipped dog.  I rallied my nerve though and went 
back in with a flyswatter.  Yeah, there were lots of 'em.  Yeah, they 
COULD have been Africanized bees.  Yeah, I didn't even have a can of bug 
spray in the house.  No matter.  I took up arms and did battle.  (AS 
AHNOLD) I was the Swattenator.  I was looking for apis mellifera, I was 
told that it was there.  (NORMAL VOICE) Because, as it turned out, they 
were, indeed, honey bees, not killer bees.  That was nice, because I'd 
have otherwise been a sad customer the moment I swatted the first one.  
Now, knucklehead that I am, I did this in bare feet, since I don't tend 
to wear foot gear in the house and I was fixated on the enemy at that 
moment; and thus, for my troubles, I stepped on one I'd swatted that 
still had enough wherewithal to sting me.  Little Bronx, who has to see 
everything I do, had sneaked up behind me as I worked, and got a zap to 
the arm.  He's a tough little guy, though, and didn't even notice until 
later.  Well, long story short, it seemed that a hive had taken up 
residence under the house, and had somehow found their way into the duct 
work down there, and through that, the house up above.  I closed off all 
the ducts, and taped up all the cracks around them.  Then we had to 
decide what to do.

Now, a little context.  Though I'm not currently as active in it as I 
once was, I am a hobbyist meadmaker.  Mead is an alcoholic beverage made 
from honey.  And bees make honey.  I therefore have a certain affection 
for these hard-working little ladies, who provide the world with so 
much, ranging from the aforementioned honey, to various nutritional 
supplements, wax products, and, without doubt, the most important 
service of all, pollination of cultivated crops -- the value of which 
runs into many billions of dollars per anum, and without which, up to 
one third of foods that we take for granted, would not be available to 
anyone at any price.  Bees are vital members of nature, the global food 
cycle, and human economies the world over.  They are also currently in 
crisis, as a plague of somewhat mysterious and unprecedented lethality 
has been devastating hives across North America and parts beyond for the 
last decade or more.  Look it up, if you have a mind.  It's bad news.  
Very, very bad news if you are a farmer, a beekeeper, or a bee.  (Pause) 
I'm not any of those things though, so I called an exterminator who came 
out here in a moon suit and just gassed those little SOB's into history.  
Yeah, there are bee relocation services available, where a so-called 
expert will come out and try to capture up the queen and get the rest of 
the hive to follow her to a new location.  I wasn't having any of that.  
They came into my house.  The friggin' moochers just moved right the 
hell in like Kato Kaylin.  Where do they get off?  Do I go around 
messing with bees?  I don't keep the things.  I buy my honey at 
Wal-mart, for cryin' out loud.  Nah.  It was on.  It was war.  World War 
One to be exact, and they were in the trenches, and oops!  They forgot 
their gas masks.  Oh well.  Chalk up another one for Union Carbide!

But even that, even the "Battle of the Bees" isn't the worst of it.  No, 
no.  For the pestiest pest of all pesty pests, we have to look to the 
humble mosquito.  Yes, those same bugs we thought we'd moved away from.  
We must have brought them with us, I guess, along with, maybe, a couple 
hundred acres of wetlands we must still have boxed up somewhere, because 
they're here, and they have numbers.  And my particular joy of them 
includes being especially attractive and REactive to them.  That's 
right, I walk outside, doesn't matter day or night, and I'm a target.  
And what's worse, a weenie little bite I didn't even feel will blow up 
bigger than that friggin' bee sting did, and itch all the way down to my 
spleen!  And Little Bronx, bless his dear 'eart, has inherited this gift 
and somehow amplified it: his mosquito bites sometimes get infected.  
Last week, he looked like we used him for bee-bee gun practice.

I mean, WHAT THE HELL?!  This is the desert?!  I have yet to even SEE a 
scorpion out here, let alone a tarantula.  And we can't even drain the 
swamps to get rid of buggers, because...there ain't no swamps.  Where 
are they coming from?  What, are they on tour?  Did they spend a week on 
a bus from Bayonne or something?  Maybe they're passing through and just 
HAVE to stop and say hey to their old pal, LnB.  Well, I could do 
without it, I'll tell ya.  I wouldn't miss 'em a bit.  I'd gas THEIR 
asses too, if I could find 'em.  I'd go after them all with the swatter 
if I could even see 'em.  As mosquitoes go, these are small guys.  
They're like the size of fruit flies.  You don't even know they were 
there until you're ripping your skin off in itchy madness.  No.  No way.  
I hate 'em.  More than any other lifeform I could name -- next to some 
HUMANS I could name -- I hate mosquitoes.  I hate 'em for the disease 
thing, which, thankfully, we don't have to deal with hereabouts.  I hate 
'em for the itch thing, which...honestly, I was thinking about this: 
doesn't the fact that their bites itch seem counter-evolutionary?  After 
getting bitten, I'm ready to perform genocide on all the mosquito 
species I can lay my hands on.  How does that help THEIR cause?  
Wouldn't it be better if their bites DIDN'T itch?  We wouldn't be 
automatically swatting at 'em the moment we see 'em.  They'd just be 
another gnat.  Fewer swats means more mosquitoes.  More mosquitoes 
means, well, more mosquitoes.

See, I think about these things.  In the middle of the night.  When it's 
dark, and quiet enough to hear a bug's wings whine...

(INTERLUDE MUSIC)

(IMPROMPTU EMAIL TALK)

(OUTRO MUSIC STARTS, THEN PLAYS UNDER THE FOLLOWING)

And that's it for this episode.  Just something that's been on my mind.  
Now it's off my mind.  Maybe it's on yours now.  If so, uh, sorry.  Then 
again, you get what ya pay for.  So, until next time, this is lostnbronx 
saying, don't let the effers bug ya.

Take care.

(OUTRO MUSIC UP)