Hi, my name is Mosquito Magnet

Apparently I represent irresistible, delicious, mosquito bait. Otherwise I can’t explain why my room is now full of creepy, unwanted, blood-sucking insects, awaiting their feast. And they’re not like….little, baby-mosquitos, that you could confuse with a needle until they start to move. No. Not like that. More like some mosquitos that survived Chernobyl. They might as well have been smoking cigarettes and flipping channels from my bed when I walked in.

Now, I’m not afraid of bats, or mice, or lizards or anything of that type. But I am deathly afraid of insects, especially of those whose size requires them travel with a valid passport. And, I don’t kill mosquitos. First, because I’m afraid to get close enough to do the killing. Who knows, it might jump onto my face, crawl up my nose, and embed itself in my brain, laying eggs and having dinner parties. Second, because I try to avoid the mess they make on my wall when I kill them. Third, because I’m not a fan of the carnage-clean-up. Mosquito body parts could go everywhere, legs, antennae, a wing or something equally ridiculous could end up inside one of my shoes. Just the IDEA of that makes my head hurt. Oh, and fourth, I have this freakin idea that if you kill one, they all start to attack you.

Now I’m a little worried. I wear a combination of scents, soaps, deodorants and fabric softeners that for some reason mosquitoes find irresistible. I can already see myself tortured in my sleep by these bastards, waked up several times at night by their buzzing, injured while trying to swatt them and bleeding to death due to excessive biting.

And as if going through mosquito hell wouldn’t be enough reason to hate them, now there is something new to worry about: chikungunya. That’s pronounced CHIK-un-gunya, with the accent on the first syllable. Or just chik, for short. The symptoms include a sudden severe headache, high fever, rash, nausea, vomiting and severe, disabling joint pain. There is no vaccine and no cure available, other than relief of the symptoms with analgesics and anticonvulsants. Most people recover within about a week, but the joint pain may continue for up to six months. In the past, chik has always been assumed to be non-fatal, but lately, deaths are being reported. Fortunately, the specie that carries this disease only lives in India, but there’s no end to my paranoia when I’m near mosquitos.