Mosquito Nights

Идет охота на комaров, идет охота!

Before we even got to Venice, our first night in Mestre, across the water from Venice where we were staying, was fully immersed in battling mosquitos. Heretofore we had somehow been spared, lulled into complacency by the lazy, chummy kind in Ljubljana, and thus completely unprepared for the marauding monsters of the Marghera region. Despite all windows being closed and mosquito traps activated, they swarmed near the ceiling, occasionally making kamikaze dives at us.

The three of us organized into a platoon. Alya was the spotter, sitting on the bed, supernaturally noticing them in the most obscure places - “ there is one across the room crawling on the brown window frame, get him!” I would swing at them with Masha’s dress (the towels were all too small; much of Europe has an explicable penchant for tiny bath towels). Masha was the closer, coming in with a spatula to finish them off after I stunned them. After we were done, the walls bore ample scars of our battle. And we tried to sleep, sprayed with our natural repellent…and with one ear and eye open…waiting to see if their batalions would re-group and we would have to arm ourselves once more.

The next day, in Venice, we went into a Farmacia to stock up on bug bite relief supplies. Masha asked pharmacist “which type of repellent would work on Venice mosquitoes”? He looked at her with a deadpan stare…”None!” “But if you want to try, 50% DEET or more.” Properly terrified, we walked out of there with a full 50% DEET spray and liberally applied it for the rest of our time in the city of canals.