The Mosquito Truck

My husband was an Air Force brat and lived in Puerto Rico as a child. One of his memories of childhood was the "Mosquito Truck." Mosquitos were abundant there and every night around 7 or 8 o'clock, they would hear a familiar "pfft, pfft, pfft" sound out in the neighborhood. The flashing orange light on the truck could be seen from a distance and the neighborhood kids would yell out "MOSQUITO MAN!" The kids would run behind the truck or ride their bicycles behind it playing in the smoke. That was a very bad idea since that smoke spewing out of the back of the truck was DDT. DDT use was banned in 1972 in the U.S. as it was suggested that DDT causes cancer.

I read the other day that men and people with type O blood are the most likely to be bitten by mosquitos. Every summer when the cool evening breezes coax us out to the stone patios under our big old oak trees...the mosquitoes dine on me like I'm a big ice cream cone. I scratch and complain but no one else is being bothered with the pesky little buggers. It ruins my outside time and I LOVE my outside time.

There are lots of remedies for a mosquito problem, citronella being the ingredient in most. We have candles and sprays, and we make sure there's no standing water. With our rainy summer the mosquitos are just worse this year.

My generation grew up with lots of dangers in bug sprays, paint, no seat belts and even some of the foods we ate have been found to cause cancer. Makes me wonder sometimes how I've made it this far!