Everything I know about bugs could fit easily into one of those pamphlets you pick up here and there with similar useless information contained therein. I couldn’t give you the proper, scientific name of any insect without a biology text handy. I prefer easier names like “damn pain in my ass” or “nibblers from Hell!”

Several summers ago, my sons attended Boy Scout camp here in northern Indiana. It was one of those moist summers with plenty of humidity and standing pools of icky brown water that seem to be miniature little Howard Johnson’s for insect breeding. Usually, they spray around here to keep the bugs at bay, but that summer they could have dumped the whole darn tanker truck on the camp and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

I went to pick up my youngest son up on the final morning of camp. It was a typical morning for that summer – already hot as a sauna with dampness nearly visible in the thick, choking air. I drove from the city, where the bugs aren’t too terrible, and into the Manhattan of mosquitodom. My God! They were everywhere! You know how, with most mosquito-infested areas, a few squirts of Off and, well, they generally stay off? Not here. I imagine soaking myself in gasoline and setting myself ablaze would have been the only thing that could have kept them at bay. I danced and swatted and jumped and zigged and zagged and ran for cover. But these mosquitoes were smarter than I was, for they found ways to crawl up my pants legs and down my collar and into my ears and . . . I think I may have swallowed one or two of the damn things.

All that exercise in the time it took to scrounge up my son’s sleeping bag, toss it in the trunk, strap his squirming booty into the front seat and hit the gas.

Somewhere, the bug gods were smiling . . .

[This Writing Practice exercise was inspired by the latest prompt posted here.]