Those people who cannot indulge in such a luxury as mosquito bars, have to sleep during the day. They sit up nights and wage war against their ferocious enemies with tobacco smoke, burning leather, wet towels, or any other weapon to which they can conveniently resort.
To be stung by a black hornet or a scorpion is bad; to be bitten by a tarantula or rattlesnake is worse; but to be punctured to the bone by the bugle of one of these mosquitoes is terrible. They are enormous insects. When flying through the air they are as discernible as thistle-down, or even humming birds. The sharp tube through which they sap their victim’s blood is fully three-quarters of an inch long, and resembles a cambric needle; this they steadily and unhesitatingly press into the flesh until they either strike a bone, or their forehead prevents them from doing deeper injury.
Towards evening they rise with pining maws from the low, damp land around the city—
“Innumerable as the blades of green, That carpet the vale of the San Joaquin;”
and as they close in upon the devoted inhabitants, their blended cries swell in pitch and compass until the sound resembles the impassioned tone of a fish-peddler’s horn. I stopped at a hotel in the lower part of the city, and before retiring for the night looked carefully about the room. As few mosquitoes were in sight, I concluded to sleep without using the bar. Congratulating myself on being assigned a room where so few of the common enemy of man were lying in wait, I extinguished the light and turned in.
Scarce was I stretched upon the couch when
“At once there rose such hungry yells, From every point the compass tells,”
that I lost no time in striking a light and adjusting the netting. I now saw them emerging from every conceivable hiding place. Trooping they came, from behind picture-frames, from under the bureau; out of vases and old empty bottles. They were climbing and clambering and pitching towards me with energy. I noticed a steady stream of them shooting out of the closet through the key-hole, with such velocity that they went warping half-way across the apartment before they could check themselves sufficiently to tack around and dive for the bed.
They had all they bargained for, to get safely through that key-hole, too. There was not much spare room, I can tell you. But for the great pressure from behind kept up by others anxious to get through, many a large fellow would have been sticking in that opening yet. But once they got started in, there was no backing out; no, indeed! On! on’, was the cry, and they pressed forward with a rush, often sacrificing a leg or wing by the maneuver. But they didn’t seem to care for the loss of one of those members so long as their bill remained intact. Deprive a mosquito of one wing, and he will seem to laugh at you while he makes the other do double duty. Brush off one leg, and he will shake the remaining ones triumphantly in your face.