On arrival, our approach towards the kitchen sink was greeted with a welcoming cloud of fruit flies. Or perhaps they’re not fruit flies, since they aren’t discerning and delight in absolutely anything that isn’t bone dry. So small are they that you can’t catch or swat them, since the air displaced by your hand’s movement wafts them away. When I bought one of those electrified racquets, I declared it the best money I ever spent. Kate will often come into the kitchen, drawn by the static crackle of the demise of creatures with about four chromosomes, to find me sweating and wild-eyed, thrashing about like McEnroe. I suspect that their life cycle is measured in hours rather than days, and that if I didn’t kill them, they’d be dead by morning anyway.
The mosquitoes are quite low-key when you consider that we are living next to a tidal river. What is odd though is that they are totally silent. I once heard that mosquitoes whine near your ears so that you will become stressed and the blood will throb, thus making their job easier. Not these ones.
Then there are the ants. At first there were only one or two innocent looking ants, strolling around in an unassuming manner, whistling, and asking directions. By now, constant streams of ants meander through the kitchen, putting up fliers and selling ant souvenirs. Indian Tupperware appears not to be airtight, and so now everything we own lives in the fridge. We have put a bell around Max’s ankle in case they try to carry him off.
As each new plague visits us, we look back fondly on the previous ones for being so benign. As we encounter huge jumping spiders, various scorpions and poisonous centipedes, I increasing regard the potentially malarial mossies as rather quaint.
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