Thankful Thursday

There is absolutely nothing more likely to get me out of bed and upright in einen augenblick (just to demonstrate that I haven't forgotten all my Deutsch) than the sound of a mozzie in my ear.  We are fortunate in Hawkes Bay in not having a lot of mozzies and that most of those we do have are not interested in humans (I read that and, on this particular subject the mosquitoes appear to have read the same book) but feed on the blood of other animals and, in fact, tend to be animal specific.

Be that as it may I will not go to sleep with a mozzie keeping me company.  So last night after having had my head on the pillow for less than a minute when a mozzie homed in I was up with the light on and a can of insecticide in my hand faster than, well, very fast.  A spray around and a turn on of the automatic sprayer and I was sound asleep within another 120 seconds: perhaps less, I stopped counting.

I always think of the time in Italy in 2012 when I shared a huge hotel bedroom with full screening which had, unfortunately, trapped a very persistent mozzie inside (and I wasn't opening them to let more in) and I was without insect repellant or killer and in the morning my face was a mass of bites and I had very little sleep.  Blood sucking little buggers they are.

On the whole, though, we are exceptionally fortunate in New Zealand in having few poisonous insects or other creatures which incommode humans unlike our friends across the Tasman who have everything from funnel-web spiders (extremely poisonous) to the venomous duck-billed platypus (which is not the cuddly creature many think it is).  We have three poisonous spiders capable of biting humans (but bites from the two venomous ones are extremely rare and there is an antidote and the white-tailed spider's reputation is much worse than the effect of its bite usually is) and no indigenous land mammals poisonous or otherwise (we have some bats and whales and sea lions and that's about it).

So today I am thankful to a friend for reminding me that I was neglecting my Thankful Thursday posts and thankful that I live in a country where I don't risk death from a mozzie bite and where I can sleep soundly at night without fear (and I'm not just referring to insects!).

Is That My Blood?

I was quietly sitting reading my emails yesterday morning first thing when a mosquito casually and rather slowly flew between my face and the computer screen.  Occasionally when they do that it's possible to squash them in flight with a clap.  I missed.  The mosquito landed on the window and before I'd had time to think I picked up a piece of paper and squashed the mosquito.  Oh dear.  It had obviously just had a large feed of blood.  Given that I was the only blood source in The Cottage I assumed that it was my blood.  Now there wasn't much but I did rather resent sharing it with a mozzie.  More to the point I knew that, whilst I was unlikely to feel the sacrilegious (well I think my body's sacred) act of invasion by its blood sucking proboscis, it was likely to cause me considerable irritation later on.

The blood on the window.  The scale is shown by the mozzie's leg.

The blood on the paper I squashed it with together with the remains of the mozzie.

I thought that there was a certain irony in the words on the piece of paper I picked up.  I had written those words some time ago in relation to FWKTM.  I never told her.  I'm not sure she'd appreciate the bloody end the paper came to.