Under attack
I seemed to be under attack from every direction yesterday. Firstly it was the mosquitos, starting about 3am. Probably not the time they did start, but the time my awareness kicked in. I found myself scratching the sides of my fingers and the bottom of my elbow, of all places. I took some consolation from the fact that my elbow is like leather and I imagined the damage it might have done to the stinger as the mosquito plunged it into my flesh, or lack thereof. We have learned, living here, that all windows and doors need to be shut by dusk, otherwise we will get an array of unwanted visitors. I don’t know what happened yesterday for there to have been more than one mosquito in our bedroom. The blitz came later, when that annoying buzzing started. Mosquitos are cunning. They don’t start their mission, until there is no movement. Lights on, rolled towel in hand and two dead mosquitos now lay on the floor, never mind it was 3.30am. Just a bit of trivia here. Apparently, it is the female mosquitos who bite, as they need the protein and I have read that when given a choice, they prefer O blood, which is the type that I am. Stephen is A and could explain why I am the one who gets the bites.
The next assault came while I was standing on the trestles, paintbrush in hand. A pesky fly was crawling up and down my calf, becoming increasingly annoying as he did so. Flies understand fly swats. Having one in the hand is a great deterrent. However, up on the trestles and hands otherwise occupied, I was unable to threaten this fly as I usually would. Each time I flicked my leg, it left me, only to return a second or two later. Not the best thing to be doing when one is two metres off the ground. Eventually, it left me alone.
The third attack came from a most unlikely source. Stephen called me outside to view a rainbow and as I ran onto the grass, I felt a series of pricks. My foot was stinging. Coming back into the porch I spied the culprit. There was a stinging nettle plant, growing up from the crack between the step and the grass. Where that came from, I have no idea but wondered if nettle seeds had been amongst the bird seed that I scatter out there each morning or maybe the birds themselves had deposited the seeds in their droppings. I had not seen stinging nettle on our section before this.
That incident reminded me of a childhood experience when I got badly stung in the bush one day. I remember my father hunting for a dock leaf when we got home, to rub on the sting. He also showed me the plant so that I could identify it and not make that mistake again.
My worst sting though, was by a blue bottle and that happened about four years ago. I was body boarding, when the jelly fish wrapped its poisonous tendrils around my ankle. The pain was excruciating. We continued swimming for about 20 minutes. Upon reaching the house, I googled treatments and discovered that hot water and ammonia were suggested to ease the pain. I put some Handy Andy floor cleaner into a bucket of hot water and immersed my ankle. The result was miraculous. The sting immediately disappeared and did not return.
And of course, I have had frequent wasp and bee stings. I am not anaphylactic, but any stung areas swell up and cause extensive itching a day or two later. Another example of itching was when I put a pine tree in the house one Christmas. I would wake up in the night in agony, once my body warmed up, with large welts all over my body. The remedy to that was to remove the tree from the house. That cured the problem instantly too. No more Christmas trees for me though.
But going back to yesterday. If one was to listen to Ted Andrews, author of Animal Speak, one would realise there was a reason for each of those unpleasant experiences. Andrews believes there is a message in every encounter we have with nature. I know the bites and stings brought attention to areas of my body that I generally neglect. I will have to think on this one. What were these pests trying to tell me?