Outwitting the mosquito
You can kill many of them. How to handle the itch from ones that get sneak past your defense.
We return now to the mosquito, that tiny Louisiana aircraft with bad intentions.
Around here, mosquitoes are not merely bugs. They are biological drones with a thirst for mischief. They come in low, find bare skin, take a blood meal and leave behind a red welt and a private invitation to madness.
Your first defense is repellent. Spray it on. Make peace with smelling briefly like a fishing camp.
But female mosquitoes are clever. One will always get through.
When that happens, the first impulse is to scratch. That feels good for one glorious second, except that the itch doubles down and returns with a vengeance that compels you to scratch more.
Dr. Trisha Pasricha, a physician and Washington Post columnist, offers a better idea: gently rub the area around the bite.
The science is simple enough. An itch works partly by contrast. The bite stands out because it feels different from the surrounding skin. Gentle rubbing blurs that little alarm.
So her lesson is restraint, which is asking a lot after a mosquito has treated your leg like the Piccadilly buffet.
Gently rubbing will not bring justice. But it might bring peace.
