mauritian mosquitos

(This is an entry about my trip to Mauritius. I know I promised to hook them all up together, but to be honest, I'm a lazy rat-bastard of a writer, and I'm letting things slide. It occurs to me that if I really want things to be posted at all, I should post them as I get to them. So. This is about Mauritius. Be warned.)

I started noticing it on the third day.

I wasn't getting bit.

All around me, the foreigners -- the Guy, his brother, his sister-in-law -- were scratching desperately at each other. In the Super-U, a massive air-conditioned supermarket that turned into our Mecca in Grand Baie, requiring a daily pilgrimage and dispensation of cash at 30 rupees a dollar, they would take turns hovering wistfully in front of the anti-bug display. Every bug repellent and anti-itch creme there, they bought. Citronella sprays and citronella candles all made their way into the grocery carts. Vape, a sweet-smelling coil of mosquito repelling incense put out by the Japanese, (those clever Japanese!) was bought by the pound. Leaving the Super-U the second day of our stay, Lydia -- the Guy's sister-in-law -- was stopped by a tired-looking white woman in a mumu and asked something in French.

"I don't know what she said," Lydia said uncertainly, when we arrived to rescued her.

"She wants to know if that stuff works," her husband told her, gesturing to the citronella spray she was clutching possessively in one hand.

"Oh. -- Je ne sais pas," she told the woman, adding helplessly in English, "Please work."

And I wasn't getting bit.

On the fourth day, I commented on the fact. "I feel sort of guilty," I said, watching In-Law Lydia squeezing out a tube of anti-itch creme onto the welts covering her legs. "I don't seem to be getting bit. It's weird. Usually I'm the first one they come to; I can't tell if I should be offended or relieved."

"Relieved," Lydia said, with the dark shadows under her eyes. "I can't sleep because I'm itching so much."

"Do you suppose they just don't like Japanese food here?" I asked, anxiously. "I feel sort of left out."

She smiled wanely. "They like Irish just fine."

"Weirdo," the Guy muttered from his Gameboy, and scratched absently at a growing sore on his arm where a mosquito had managed to reach bone marrow.

A long while back, my sister and her boyfriend had pressured us to purchase an herbal mosquito repellent called "Green Ban" from Australia. In the name of 'Better Safe than Sorry,' I lathered it on my arms and legs the second we passed mid-afternoon. We lauded the benefits of the concoction to all the Guy's relatives, who watched me continue to be unbitten with something approaching awe. "Maybe Mauritian mosquitoes just don't like the way my blood smells?" I suggested.

The Guy's mother, in a crafty, absent-minded way, borrowed the Green Ban and disappeared with it altogether. It was days before we retrieved it from her. "Oops," she said, when questioned on it; her eyes opened wide and she giggled. "I sink I leave at Veggie Tombeau."

That night I got bit for the first time. I crouched in front of the rotating fan and watched a thumbnail-sized mosquito land on my hand. It might have been male or female; I didn't give it time to sort out its gender issues. Slapping at mosquitoes has become a reflexive response, and before my conscious mind had time to register that it was in fact a bloodsucker, my other hand was already sending it to the big blood bank in the sky.

Me: "There's a black thing on my--" slap "--ow!"

My Left Hand: "Son of a bitch!"

My Right Hand: "You're welcome."

My brain: "What just happened?"

A tiny white bump grew in the middle of the big red welt I made on my other hand. Having gotten initiated to the Company of the Bit, I promptly celebrated my new association.

"FUCK."

I waved the carcass of my first kill between thumb and forefinger, feeling as though it should be mounted somehow, and all within earshot gathered to admire the size of it.

Mauritius, it turned out, was a little out of the common way in its mosquito development. Among the rare birds and foliage that it produced, it also happened to have developed a special model of mosquito: the stealth mosquito, capable of silent flight and non-intrusive vampirism. It's amazing how much fear is taken out of the whole mosquito experience if one can't hear them coming. It occurred to me that I hadn't gotten malaria pills before leaving for Mauritius; I crossed my fingers and relied on the lack of bites to keep me from catching anything dangerously related to dysentary. Even though there was some water available for the flushing of toilets, it wasn't meant to be used every time.

"You can't get AIDS from mosquito bites," I told the Guy in exasperation, when he threatened to come down with the disease then and there.

He eyed me with skepticism. "Are you sure?" he demanded. "Are you sure sure?"

"It's impossible," I said, firmly.

"Sure," he grumped. "Say that again when I'm dead."