November 20, 2006

Chinese Mosquitos...
There aren't so many mosquitos now that it's the middle of November but there's still the odd few flying around my room. Now you might be under the impression that a mosquito anywhere is just a mosquito, but I can assure you that Chinese mosquitos are something special. Something that I have never encountered before. First of all, I've never noticed that there was so much variation in mosquitos -different sizes, colours, wing contours, leg shapes, etc.
Normally it's not too hard to kill a mosquito. You see it on the wall and hit it -it's dead and there's a spot of blood on the wall. But in China after you hit a mosquito on the wall it flies away. That is if you can even manage to get close to it before it flies away. Once it flies away you can try to catch it in your hand and squish it, but that probably won't work either. You see, I've noticed that mosquitos do this clever diving trick. They pretend to be dead and fall out of your hand when you open it, but then they fly away. There's also the disappearing mosquito trick, where you think you have the mosquito in your hand because you didn't see it fly away, but you open your hand and it's gone.
When you lay in bed you can hear them swarming towards your head and buzzing in your ear, but as soon as you turn on the light they disappear. You know there are more then one, because you've heard them crash into each other (no joke!). There's no doubt the next day they were there either as you have many red spots, of different sizes and 'itchiness', from the mosquito's buffet the previous night.
Maybe it's due to generations of people trying to kill all the mosquitos, but it seems only to have bred smarter and faster mosquitos.
One night in September I killed between 40 and 50 mosquitos in my room, I was counting, before I realised that there were just as many waiting for me to turn out the light before they started feasting on my flesh again. I tried the mosquito repellent I brought from Canada, which only seemed to attract more mosquitos. It was like a signal saying "human trying to hide from us, attack!". Needless to say I didn't sleep much that night, even though I ended up switching rooms and sleeping on the couch.

2 comments:

Stephen said...

I'm glad you enjoyed the post! A week or two ago some of us foreigners were talking about the mosquitos here, and we all came to the same conclusion! In the spring when the mosquitos are back in force, I'll have to try that stuff or buy a mosquito net like some of the teachers and students have.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of a flea circus, or you trying to do a magic show. Can't you do a lttle of that magic you learnt and make them all disappear? Perhaps you could put a magic/comedy show and share with us at the MacKenzie's. The way they like me, I sure hope they never make them over here.