The mosquitoes here are black rather than brown, and a bit smaller than those back home. The size may give them an advantage because you can’t feel them biting you. You just have to be lucky enough to see them on you and then hope your hand is fast enough to yield a tiny but satisfying splat on your leg.
What the Fijian mosquitoes lack in size they more than make up for in number. Our first couple of days here we pretty much got eaten alive (I counted eighteen bites on my left foot and ankle alone) partly because of the rains the previous days, which always seems to make them more plentiful, and partly because we hadn’t yet mastered our pest defense techniques.
Now we know that personal repellant is best applied in early morning and late afternoon when the little vampires are most active. We know that the itch can be calmed with calendula cream or Purell (thanks for that last tip, Sandy). We know tea tree oil also helps with itching and is great as an anti-inflammatory and disinfectant. We are also now well-equipped with mosquito coils, which burn slowly and release an acrid smoke that deters the bugs, but smells so nasty that it also deters us sometimes. Citronella candles aren’t quite as effective as the coils but are sometimes enough and they smell much better. If we were veterans of lakeside summers in Minnesota maybe we would know all this stuff already, but our home in Olympia is pretty much mosquito-free so this is a new challenge for us.
Another interesting thing about the Fijian mosquitoes is that they typically stand on only four legs. Their other two hind legs, which incidentally are banded with lighter stripes, tend to sweep out behind them floating above the ground as if they were merely decorative. It’s as if the mosquito wishes not just to suck your blood but to taunt you as well by proving she can do so with two legs tied behind her back.
One of the unlucky ones
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