Reason 10,096 for living in Norcia: I've already taken the mosquito curtains down.
We're past the Big Heat of the hottest summer on record (TBTG!!). I've had a couple in the sitting room and I've been bitten a few times when out on a stomp because I forgot to use the Muskol someone brought me from Canuckistan, but on the whole the mosquito thing that was such a misery and plague in S. Marinella is just not really a big issue here.
I had the curtains up this summer, but mostly kept the windows and shutters closed through the day to combat the heat. (It worked too, and when it was 38 outside, it was at leat 10 to 15 degrees cooler inside.) But now that the temperature has dropped and the nights are a little longer and a little cooler - enough that I'm pulling my cardies out of the box - the annoyance of fighting with the curtains has outweighed the usefulness of keeping the bugs out.
In this neighbourhood, with a dairy farm across the next field, the bigger issue than mozzies is flies. Got me onea them electric tennis racket things, which I'm getting pretty good with.
The contrast is with Santa Marinella, where if you don't have your windows screened and have nets over the bed, you will be eaten alive in summer. And by "summer" I mean April to the end of October. And even then, at the height of the season you have to sleep with a bottle of bug-off and a tube of antihistamine cream under your pillow. I used to routinely do a perimeter security check around the bed every night before climbing in to make sure there wasn't any little opening. You have to tuck the ends of the nets under the mattress. Even so, I would be bitten while sleeping at least three times a week. Wake up at two am, turn on the light and there the little bastard would be, stuck inside the net.
You got used to it, I suppose, (and of course it wasn't as bad as the arctic where the mosquitoes come literally in clouds) but the bugs were really miserable on the coast. I never went anywhere without a bottle of bug spray in my handbag.
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1 comment:
I have one of those tennis raquet things. They're brilliant! I think I might have a nasty streak as I thoroughly enjoy frying the little blighters. (Should there be a comma in there?)
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