It's mosquito season in South Korea again. In Korean, mosquitoes go by the ugly-sounding name mogi (that's "moh-ghee," not "moh-jee"). Even in our office, which is way at the end of a hallway and far from any windows, we routinely get skeeters. When they fly close, we clap at them, attempt ninja-grabs, and even use Windex (well, I use Windex). We are, all of us, only marginally successful at killing the little beasts on the first try, but they all die eventually... only to be replaced by others that have somehow managed to sneak onto the premises.
I can't wait for those laser-shooting mosquito-killers (see here—this tech is by no means new) to be mass-produced and sold to the public. Along with setting the machines up in offices, schools, and residences, we should put thousands of them around the perimeters of lakes, deep inside forests, and around all pools of standing water. Driving mosquitoes extinct would deprive birds of necessary protein, you say? Boo-hoo. Birds and other predators don't kill mosquitoes nearly fast enough, so fuck 'em.*
But until the mosquito laser comes out for the general public, we have to make do with the killing tools we have: our clumsy hands, our slow wits, and our Windex.
September—blessed autumn—can't come fast enough. In Korea, summer is a season to endure, partly because of mosquitoes.
*Actually, studies by people working on the malaria problem in Africa have shown that radically reducing a mosquito population has almost no ecological impact. Birds deprived of skeeters can probably just hunt other chitinous prey.
3 comments:
Yeah, I haven't forgotten the Korean mosquito season. One of the surprises with the move to the Philippines is that the mosquitos are not nearly as bad as they were back there. You'd think the opposite given the climate here. Anyway, I have one of those fluorescent light zappers that pops periodically as it fries one of those bloodsuckers. I put on some repellant after my shower as well.
Thanks for reminding me of something I DON'T miss about Korea!
This isn't really full-on mosquito season yet. That begins in earnest once the rainy season is over and you have all that standing water for them to lay their eggs in. That's when things get really bad. Not looking forward to that.
I have actually yet to see a mosquito (of course, I have no probably jinxed myself and will be set upon by a swarm of blood-sucking little demons).
Charles,
It may not be full-on mosquito season, but it's mosquito season for sure. I got bitten twice during lunch inside my office building yesterday; the basement restaurant that I favor, called Mido Shikdang, is one of the best indicators of when mosquito season starts. At the appropriate time of year, the old guy who co-manages the restaurant gets his Tennis Racket of Death out to zap the vampiric creatures that always seem to find his eatery, and when the racket is out, we all know the battle with nature has officially begun.
You have yet to see a mosquito, eh? Well, academe does tend to shield people from reality. Heh.
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