winter walks

We're lucky in that where we live now is a few acres of woodland we can walk through to see nature and hopefully learn how to fish from the bayou. But deciding to go for a walk might not always be a good thing. Now I'm not talking about being worried about the black bear in the area, or a ravenous pack of coyotes, or alligator trudging along...but my personal nemeses.. mosquitos. You see there's a fine line it seems between them hiding and being asleep as it's too cool or warm and awake and very hangry for your blood. I say your blood but basically I think I'm mosquito crack. But I digress let me explain my proof to the my blood is mosquito crack.

As a family we were up and wanting to go for a walk, it was decided at about 8am, I'd gone out and it was nicely cool the sun hadn't warmed all the dew from the grass yet so it was a good sign of mosquitoes being asleep. But if anyone who's ever had small children and trying to read this, they'll understand that 'lets go now' means in small child language 'procrastinate, procrastinate now' so there's lost shoes, toilet breaks, various 'can I take' questions as apparently it's not a walk without a stuffed animal. So we end up leaving nearly an hour later. And it's a little warmer... So the walk begins, it's nice and cool under what's left of the canopy and the boys have sticks and the usual can't see any animals as they're loud and scare everything off, and I begin swatting the mosquitos away... Just me...so that was weird. But we continue the boys are having fun, we make to the back to the bayou and wait for a bit to see if there's any fish bobby to the surface to eat. I'm swatting more mosquitoes. On the way back the start to get bad as it's heating up after being out another thirty or so minutes so the boys begin to run back, and the wife and so do I. We escape out of the woods and it's like a horror movie, we break into the sunlight and the majority of those following stay in the shadows as if their an insectile vampires trying not to be burned by the sun. 

We get inside and that's when we do a bit count, each boy has a couple each, the wife has five or so, and me will I have twenty plus... There is something about my blood that they crave.

It's then that my eldest child pipes in and states 'its only the females that bite'. So great, I'm a ladies man, but to the completely wrong species, and I'm mildly allergic to them.