"Tamara P. Duvall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Mosquitoes. In Poland, they were plentiful, but only outdoors; they >almost never came into the house. Here, it's the same; they happily >congregate over patches of standing water (lotsa happiness there, the >past few weeks <g>), especially in the shade.
Wahhhh! So are you telling me in the South, even the mosquitoes are polite? ! I am so envious! A vampire insect that waits on the threshold -- it boggles the imagination (at least, to someone who grew up with the impolite Michigan species). I just did a Google search, and apparently one of our Michigan mosquito species is even called the "northern house mosquito", Culex pipiens. They like shade: houses count as "shady". If we have even a small hole in a window screen, say the size of a dime (about 1cm), they will funnel inside like the pointy end of a tornado. Not only are they whiny and annoying, now they also carry West Nile virus. Historically mosquitoes were malaria carriers here. Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote "Democracy in America" in the 1830's, went hunting up near Saginaw, and found the mosquitoes so fierce he couldn�t even pause to write in his notebook. Some summers when they are bad, I can't even pick black raspberries with long sleeves, jeans, AND mosquito repellant on -- they buzz all around you until they drive you flat NUTS. This page http://www.mackinac.org/article.asp?ID=25 describes Michigan in the early 1800's as "uninhabitable" due to the hordes of mosquitoes. The page has some other interesting quotes: "In 1859, the new Michigan Agricultural College in East Lansing came to a standstill because all 100 students, and all but one of the faculty members, contracted malaria." and "Tocqueville later wrote that he had "never experienced a torment" like mosquitoes, which were "the scourge of the American solitudes." " Wow, someone who has experienced a Michigan mosquito cloud, writing with the grammar of the 1830's. They are a scourge, all right. Lynn Carpenter in SW Michigan, USA alwen at i2k dot com To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
