Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Mosquito Cost

Sometimes I am a diva. This will come as a complete shock to . . .absolutely no one. While I apply my Southern Belle upbringing in wide swaths, I have moments where my actions and intentions don’t exactly go together.

Take this holiday weekend. My proscritos del norte invited us to join the family at their cabin in the woods of northern Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior. Beautiful. Bucolic. Relaxing. Inviting. All the things you’d want from a brief respite. Except for the SWARMS of mosquitoes. Billions by my quick mathematical calculations (#of actual mosquitoes minus futile fanning divided by degree of exasperation time degree of exaggeration). It was ridiculous.

I don’t know, maybe it was the margaritas or maybe it was being so close to Canada that I got to thinking I was Celine Dion carrying prefab twins or something, but I fished out my metaphorical Marie Antoinette wig and boldy took action: I decided to pay the offspring to kill the mosquitos.

A dollar.

Per mosquito.

Uh-huh, I know.

Who knew that a 12 year old could be a killing machine. Two hundred mosquitoes later and daddy is thinking “that coulda been a bar tab instead of a mass hit on the Cheeshead mosquito population.” Hell, I may have to go give blood a few times to scrape that together. Should have just given it to the mosquitoes and cut out the middlemen.

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