There are all kinds of interesting critters that we run into in the desert of northeastern Brazil. Frogs, tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, flies, things I don’t even know how to translate.

The most ferocious, however, is the mosquito.

Kinda funny, isn’t it?

Let me tell you what these little suckers can do. Last March, one bit me and shared a fascinating little illness with me called “dengue.” Dengue is classified as a tropical disease. Somewhat akin to malaria, after a 7-10 day incubation period it announces it’s presence with a ferocity that is difficult to believe; high fever, body pains, extreme eye pain, vomiting, diarrhea, a peculiar rash that gives a necklace pattern around your neck. I have never, ever been as sick as I was at that point. The symptoms can stay for weeks and death is a more common occurrence than you’d like to think.

Even after the primary symptoms are gone it can take up to another eight weeks to regain your former self.

I discovered that Listerine, the mouthwash (but only the original) can successfully keep them from bitting you, but it wouldn’t kill them. When you go into a bathroom, especially at night, the bathroom can be swarming with hundreds of them.

I’ll take little frogs jumping on you in the bathroom while buck naked any day!

On this last trip I picked up a can of mosquito spray and began packing it every time I’d go into the bathroom.

Nice!

I literally exterminated thousands upon thousands of the beast! I took extreme delight in seeing the floor black with their little dead bodies.

At one point, as I was jumping out of the bathroom after releasing a cloud of mosquito-death so I wouldn’t have to inhale it and so they could get about the business of dying, I must have looked like a ninja. Crouched, holding the door shut with one hand and wielding the can of spray like a sword, I was fiendishly mumbling under my breath.

I didn’t see my wife staring at me.

“WHAT are you doing?”

“Killing ‘squiters.'”

“Why are you crouched and holding the door?”

“I don’t want any of them to escape!”

“Why were you yelling, ‘Die suckers!’?”

With a crafty smile I replied, “Vengeance.”