mosquitoes

I've lived in places before where biting insects were problems.

I grew up in Montana, where the mosquitoes only thrived for a month or two, but they were big and there was a lot of them.

I lived in Mississippi, where the mosquitoes came out late in the year, when the heat dipped to tolerable levels. As the sun drooped into the horizon, swarms of the little buggers swirled about your head and arms.

I also lived for a time in New Orleans, where I woke up every morning with another bite or two from an unidentified bug, a reminder of just how well the humidity nutured a variety of insects and just how poorly my window unit air conditioner kept the nature of the place at bay.

But the character of the mosquitoes here in D.C. is entirely different from anywhere else. Unlike mosquitoes I'm familiar with, the ones here are tiny and stealthy. You don't have to swat down black swarms. In fact, you rarely see them. But every time I walk outside, I end up with a few more bites.

It doesn't feel like New Orleans, where the bugs just seemed to be an unavoidable piece of the city as a whole. Here, the bites are far more of an aggravation for seeming out of place. And the mosquitoes seem a bit more malevolent for coming in single, clandestine raids instead of frontal assaults in battalion strength.