You know that line about no good deed going unpunished? Well...
I just went outside to turn on the garden sprinkler. Since the sprinkler is already in place and I knew I would only be out there for a minute, I didn't bother changing from shorts to pants. I also wore zorries (a Japanese word for those rubber thongs that are also called flip-flops. Since I grew up in military housing and those sandals originated in Japan, that's the name I've always used), not shoes. These 2 decisions proved to be costly.
Once I turned on the faucet, I noticed that I still had a wheelbarrow full of wood scraps left over from my wood delivery. I thought it would be a good idea to add them to the wall of firewood I've built so that they too could dry and eventually be burned. Another storm is coming tomorrow. It makes no sense to let them sit in what will be a wheelbarrow full of water.
So I started stacking the wood scraps and was at it for no more than 2 minutes when I looked down and saw six mosquitoes chomping on my left leg. It was like one of those ads you see for mosquito repellent, where you always wonder how they managed to find a schmuck stupid enough to go along with putting his arm into a hive of bloodsuckers.
I swatted most of them and decided to hell with the rest of the wood scraps. I headed indoors with my left leg already starting to itch.
The net damage? As many as 16 mosquito bites on the left leg (some are so close together that I'm not sure if they're really two bites) and 2 on the right.
Yikes. A lot of damage for less than 5 minutes outside.
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