School, Mosquitos & Elastic Bands

Mosquitos have always found me very tasty. Since my first uncomfortable encounter with them some decades ago I have always been careful to pack or procure protection whenever I visit a country that these pesky little creaures call home.

Regarding that first unpleasant meeting, I was sailing around the Florida keys with some friends, perhaps 25 years ago. It was late afternoon, we had anchored and I had set off in the dingy with the boat's owner and his two young sons to do some fishing. Perhaps we'd pull in enough small red snapper to make a tasty supper? So there we were looking out for a suitable place to cast our lines when I spotted, some way off in the distance, a large low flying aircraft. I could tell it was large for when it banked and turned the wingspan was substantial. It had two large propeller engines that growled as it banked, turned, swooped downwards then climbed, banked and repeated the process in a large figure of eight.

It was really rather elegant, swinging back and forth, but it didn't take us very long to identify the machine and its true purpose. As it got closer we could see that it was an old Dakota and it was dusting the islands. The consequence of this was that the entire island population of flying bugs had, as one, decided that they would be much safer at sea and in our little boat we were suddenly immersed in a black blanket of fleeing insects. Some of them decided to stop for a spot of dinner as they cruised through and yours truly was very much on the menu. The outboard was quickly deployed and we hastened back to the boat and battened down the hatches. My companions bore one or two bites each, I had in excess of a hundred. As you may imagine, dear reader, I have been more careful since.  

All of which brings me to last night,  I had bought a plug - in anti mosquito device for our little room in Lighthouse Beach but, as we were leaving this morning at stupid o'clock, I had decided to unplug it and pack it away and that a more manual approach to pest control would be adopted for one night. Out with the rolled up newspaper I dealt fiercely with the few bugs that had risked entry. One however remained out of reach as the room had an 11 ft ceiling.

Recalling fun-filled days at school particularly in Chemistry, a subject of which even the basics had always eluded me, I remembered how the extension of an elastic band over the length of a 12" ruler would give the projected rubber ring great velocity and, with care, would also allow a highly accurate delivery.Adapting this memory to my situation I borrowed an elastic band from Kathy's bag of hair accessories, extended it over my index finger,  took aim, and released. McLeish 1 - Bug 0 as the mosquito bit the dust and in one action both assured an unbitten sleep and also proved that my time at Maidstone Technical High School for Boys was not, contrary to the headmaster's report at the time, entirely wasted.