The Michigan Air Force

The Michigan Air Force has arrived. I can't recall its attacks ever being as relentless as they've been the last few days here in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. They just keep on coming. It's putting something of a mild damper (mild because being in da U.P. overcomes all other of life's troubles) on me Hessel visit.

For the uninitiated, I'm talking about mosquitos. Their assaults against ol' Marty have been quite successful this year. They've driven me from the front porch and the garage, forcing me to read on the living room couch or at the kitchen table rather than in my usual spots. Normally the tiny miscreants don't appear until the late evening but they're flitting about at all hours lately. 

It's become more than a nuisance. My arms and legs are now completely water repellant, me having slapped at the pesky air raiders with a wet brush brush loaded with Thompson's Water Seal countless times while sealing the front porch this week. The clothes I wore while seeing to that chore can't be washed because the slapping of water repellant on them has rendered the shorts and t-shirt impervious to wetness. I removed them from the washer last night completely dry. 

Bug spray isn't stopping them, leading me to wonder if they've mutated into a strain unaffected by the products currently on the market. Yard guard and citronella candles? The skeeters laugh at them. I can hear it. It's a miserable little high pitched, cartoonish guffaw. Kind of snide and dismissive too.

I cannot remember the last time I was so eaten up with mosquito bites. But then, I am in Hessel. They can't drive me out. Work demands will do that quickly enough, and only then because I do have a conscience. Of sorts.