104 Mosquitoes, Sue, Paul and Me

Working in the Chilcotin during the summer was one of the finest experiences of my thirty years at the Pacific Forestry Centre. What made it even more interesting and enjoyable was our summer help.

This particular summer Sue, Paul and I had started doing surveys of the lodge pole pine forests in BC, beginning in the Chilcotin. Most of the Chilcotin is relatively free from mosquitoes but if there was water anywhere near by, cover your head and start swatting.

One of our trips out found us in the pine forests between Nimpo and Anahim Lake, which as it turned out, at least from my perspective was one of the swampiest areas that I have ever worked in. It seems that everywhere you looked there was a swamp infested with those little beasts known as mosquitoes.

Not only were there mosquitoes in abundance there were gazillions of their little cousins the guys with the little white boots known as black flies. Get bitten by one of those little monsters and the blood would really flow. Make sure that your trouser cuffs were wrapped tightly around your ankles and your shirt sleeves were tied tightly around your wrists, because even then you would have rows of purple welts and blood running down your legs from around the top of your socks and the cuffs of your shirt sleeves.

It was the mosquitoes however that drove us crazy, these little beasts would hover overhead in huge clouds until their hum would send us into a state of hysteria or at least drive us to spray on gallons of the hikers best friend known as deet. The hysteria brought on by the mosquito was far stronger then what deet might in fact do to the desperate hiker. As with all chemicals the expediency of the moment often overrode the potential danger.

I did learn one thing however, deet is a good solvent for most things plastic or at least it’s chemical carrier is, as the handle of the increment borer would to turn into a sticky mess every time I applied deet to my exposed body parts, and this was at least three to four times each day when in mosquito country.

I can still hear the hum of the mosquitoes overhead and remember quite vividly the time that Sue Poppel freaked out and I thought for sure had gone completely bonkers when she went into a hysterical fit when they had gotten in behind her glasses and were pinging off her eyeballs.

I can’t say as I felt as sorry for her as I should have, as she used to completely get on my nerves and I sometimes got a sense of perverse satisfaction for her distress. This of course went against my upbringing and moral decency and I had to pay for it with a guilty conscience, well maybe just a little bit.

Well, gone are the days when my jeans were black from mosquitoes trying to suck my blood. Even though the mosquitoes never made me itch or swell up, I still hated them anyway.