A Game of Hot Pursuit

Sometimes there’s a good reason a campground isn’t crowded. Especially during holiday season in New Zealand. The reason there was room for us to back our caravan under a nice big shade tree was not obvious at first. Pretty soon though, we noticed the mosquitoes. We saw them as soon as we arrived, but didn’t expect to be too bothered inside our caravan. We even attempted to eat supper outside. I setup a mosquito net under a tree and setup the table and chairs under it.



When we crawled under the net with our plates, Amy looked up and noticed the swarm of mosquitoes licking their proboscises and said, “great idea Oliver, let’s go inside”. And I thought I had been so clever with the mosquito net. Of course, there were more outside the net, and still more in our van. They found a way into our van and told all their friends. I tied to kill as many as I could before going to bed, but at 2:30, they were buzzing around our heads tormenting us like a - well, swarm of mosquitoes.

Since I couldn’t sleep, I decided to fight back. I didn’t want to wake the kids by clapping my hands, so I decided to use firepower. I was half asleep and pissed off, so it seemed like a good idea to burn the damned things somehow. I lit a candle and held it under the ones on the ceiling so that the flame wasn’t close enough to make a mark on the ceiling, but close enough to encourage them to move on. With Amy laughing nervously in the background (and thinking this might be a sport the yahoos who like to kick up dust in the campground might enjoy also), I followed the bastards one at a time with the flame under them as they flew up against the ceiling. To my utter joy, they would often fly into the wax of the candle and end their miserable existence instantly. Pretty soon I had 13 mosquito carcasses embedded in Amy’s centerpiece organic bee wax candle. I really don’t suggest trying this at home though, especially late at night when you’re confined with your family in a small space made of highly flammable materials.

With only a little candle wax on our duvet, and a few small black smoke stains on the ceiling, I won the battle against the bloody mosquitoes, and we could finally sleep in peace.


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