May 2, 2004

• Not-So-Finely
  Tuned Reflexes

  I don’t think it was the mosquito that woke me today.  The bug
  only triggered the reflexive slap that woke me.  Hitting myself,
  hard, on nose or ear does tend to bring me out of sleep quite
  quickly.  I do a lot of that this time of year.  Later on in
  summer, when I’ve gotten used to slapping skeeters again, I tend to
  make the slaps more gently.  It really doesn’t take a lot of force
  to squash a skeeter, unless it’s one of the hard-bodies that hatch
  relatively late in the season.  Even for them a hard slap isn’t
  appropriate.  They can take a sharp blow, lie stunned for a
  microsecond, then buzz off unhurt.

  The technique required for hard-bodied mosquitoes is a firm slap to
  restrain them and then an even firmer mash-and-roll motion to mangle
  them.  By the time their hatch comes out (there are dozens of
  species of mosquitoes around here) my ear will be attuned to the
  various whines and buzzes and I’ll be able to tell by the sound what
  action is appropriate.  For most, the simple slap is good
  enough.  Ineffective on hard-bodies, it is too much for the big
  soft bombers that splatter messily unless just gently tapped.  Not
  that those well-honed techniques will do me much good when I’m asleep,
  half-asleep, or fully absorbed in some activity.  If my mind is
  otherwise occupied, the right hand jerks up and –*whap*– “Ow!”–I get
  myself again.  So far this year mosquitoes have come singly. 
  That one this morning either fell victim to my slap or flew away. 
  I’ve not seen nor heard a trace of it since.

   This
  could turn out to be another mosquito-cloud year, though.  The
  muskeg across the road resounds to frog-song day and night, and has for
  a couple of days.  In dry summers the frogs give forth with a few
  chirps at breakup or we never hear from them at all and they stay in
  their protected underground lairs waiting for a wet spring to come
  forth.  The Alaska wood frog
  is able to survive as many as five or more winters buried in the ground
  it burrows into in the fall as the nights above-ground become too cold
  for it.  When an appropriately wet spring comes along, up come the
  frogs.  Last night when Doug went out for an armload of firewood,
  he said that for a moment he thought a train was passing, until he
  realized the sound was the frogs.  There must be a million of them
  out there in our little muskeg, making up for the last few (dry) years.

  
  There is enough water standing out there in the muskeg that I’m pretty
  sure this is going to be a good summer for the frogs and the mosquitoes
  they eat, and for everything else, such as our state insect the
  Four-Spot Skimmer dragonfly and the violet-green swallows, that eat
  mosquitoes.  If I can modulate those slaps before I maim myself,
  it might be a good summer for me.

  I’m
  especially fond of these swallows, and not just because they are
  beautiful to see swooping in flight as they catch bugs, or because they
  eat mosquitoes.  A pair of them were nesting inside a knothole in
  the soffit under the eaves of our old trailer when Charley, my ex-,
  towed it out here to the Susitna Valley from our previous home in
  Rabbit Creek south of Anchorage.  The parent birds flew alongside
  for the entire hundred miles, and they or their offspring or cousins
  have nested there every year since then.

  

  • 2:07 pm
  • 7 Comments