Buggy Days are Here Again

...and it's not even summer.

When we were looking at the house last summer, we noticed a lot of bugs and knew that we'd be dealing with the same thing a year later, but we kinda imagined it wouldn't happen till July or August. Nope. Bug Day 2007 was May 10.

When I was at sleepaway camp 20 -- oops, 30 -- years ago, back when the earth was cooler, there used to be a crazy day like this when the insect population increased a hundredfold overnight. It seemed to depend on the weather and some switches that activate bugs' eggs and cocoons. Since camp was up in Maine, the temperature was a bit chillier than it is here in New Paltz, so Bug Day up there was consistently much later, like mid-July. I remember that after Bug Day, it was easy to tell which kids had more severe reactions to mosquitos, like my brother. Looking at his arms and legs, you'd assume that he was an 8-year-old heroin addict. Mosquitos hated me, however, and my bites produced only tiny welts that barely itched. So I'd come home with single-digit blemishes, but John would be covered head to toe with what appeared to be about 200 new nipples. He actually counted one year, and 200 was the number he came up with.

So it's Bug Day all over again here in the Noop, but we still have about 4 warm months left. Oh, joy. And wouldn't ya know it, but I married someone with my brother's type of blood, the kind that the mozzies love. As it happens, our eldest inherited her mom's bad luck with bugs. Of the younger two, one of them is like me, but the other is a total mosquito magnet. I can't remember which one of them it is, but I think we'll know soon enough!