So there I was, beyond bored and sitting in my apartment back in Hartford, Connecticut. This was about four or five months prior to moving to Thailand and I was looking for something to watch on Netflix, or maybe it was Amazon Prime. Regardless, after scrolling aimlessly for god knows how long, a series called “72 Dangerous Places to Live” caught my attention. “Huh, what is this show about?” After reading the synopsis and browsing through the featured episodes I had noticed that Thailand was on the list so I figured why not give it a watch.
Apparently Thailand is home to The Asian Tiger Mosquito and this thing is a vector for all sorts of viruses that are responsible for causing Dengue Fever, which is extremely deadly. According to Google, more than 500,000 people are hospitalized each year because of Dengue Fever and about 12,500 of them end up dying as a result. This is an excruciating death by the way. High fever is one thing, but then there’s the abdominal pain along with profuse vomiting until there’s blood in your puke, blood in your pee, blood in your stool, blood even coming out of your nose. Then you die.
There’s about a four hour window each day during monsoon season where they come out to feast so that’s when they’ll get you. Just as the sun is coming up and just as the sun is going down; two hour spans each. Not much different than the French and Indians in that respect.
Well, fast forward about one year and it’s February of 2022. I’m sitting alongside a waterfall here in Thailand, smoking a jungle stogie when a mosquito lands on my thigh. I immediately identified it by the stripes and thought to myself “Oh no, it’s an Aedes Albopictus (Asian Tiger Mosquito)... I took a look at my watch and it read 5:45 in the afternoon; the sun sets at 6:30. “Shit! You are so fucked…. Remain calm, you’ve been in this situation many times and there are loopholes to this Matt, loopholes.”
In this case, the loophole is that if you let a mosquito fill up on your blood and fly off instead of squashing the little bastard, it’s impossible to contract anything. Have patience, let the Asian Tiger do it’s thing and you’ll be fine. So that’s what I did, and despite the annoying sensation, I sat there patiently waiting for the mosquito to finish while also giving it some words of encouragement in hopes of speeding up the process. “Hurry up buddy, come on now… You can do this, drink it up already.”
What felt like a minute or so eventually passed when all of a sudden a second mosquito landed on my forearm. Sure enough it was another Asian Tiger. “Damnit!!! Whatever, let them finish drinking then get your shit and go home.” Now I was getting frustrated, especially because the first mosquito still hadn’t even finished yet. I’m glaring at the two of them at this point and there were no more words of encouragement, only threats. “I swear on Jesus of Nazareth, if you two don’t hurry—” Boom. A third one landed on me and that's when enough was enough…
Unfortunately they're no longer with us. The good news is that so far, there have been no signs or symptoms other than a few itchy bumps. Also, in the event that something does happen at least they went out first. That’s a win in my book. On the drive home however, this theory of letting mosquitos finish drinking instead of killing them kept lingering in the back of my mind. There’s something about it that wasn’t sitting very well with me so I decided to do a little bit of research later that evening.
Go figure, the whole thing is a lie. Apparently it was made up by a bunch of Catholics way back when in order to discourage their children from swatting and fidgeting during church services. Nearly my entire life I’d been under the impression that letting mosquitos suck your blood until they fly away peacefully will guarantee that you do not get any side effects. Not even an itchy bump. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat there watching a mosquito steal my blood over all these years.
Now, you’re probably thinking something along the lines of “Didn’t you notice the itchy bumps that were left on you after all those bites?” The answer is yes, absolutely. But that’s because the same thing would happen damn near every time; I let one drink and then they all show up only to get squashed. The only difference is that this time there was never any concern in regards to contracting something like Dengue Fever.
As stated earlier, there have been no signs or symptoms since leaving the waterfall and it’s been nearly a week so it’s safe to say that the coast is clear. To be honest, I sit back with a jungle stogie and watch the sunset damn near every night unless it’s raining. The mosquitos are almost always biting but never is there any actual worry. Prior to coming here, people had asked time and time again: “Oh my goodness, you’re moving abroad!? Aren’t you afraid of this or aren’t you afraid of that?” It just blows my mind how common it is for people to fear the world outside of their homes.
The moral to the story is this: don’t let fear stop you from pursuing the things that excite you in life. Unless it's something like volunteering to help the Ukranians fight the Russians or poach poachers in Africa, don’t overthink. Believe it or not, the world is safer now than it has ever been and that trend continues to improve despite what you may see in the media. Speaking of which, most of us should agree by now that any bit of information being broadcasted should be taken with a gram of salt (Unfortunately, it seems as though a grain is no longer enough) so fact check everything or you may find yourself in the middle of the jungle watching something like an Asian Tiger Mosquito drink your blood one day.
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