How I got buzzed on the 4th of July.

God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
- Ogden Nash

The fly sucks ass, but the mosquito
Is surely Satan, incognito.
- Scoop Dat

I took the Bug to Talkeetna to see a concert for the 4th of July. Given the summer we’ve been having, we brought our rain gear, which meant we had the first really hot sunny day of the year. By the time we got there, it was 80 degrees; lacking shorts, I had to chop the Bug’s sweatpants off at the knees before we went to the playground.

The band, Toubab Krewe, was fantastic. The Bug was mesmerized by the drums. He sat on stage and stared, his eyes like saucers. Afterward, he proclaimed them “the bestest band EVER!”. He was especially thrilled to get high fives from the two drummers after the concert. By then, it was 10:30 p.m. and Jyoti asked if we wanted to stay in their small townside cabin or go across the river and hike 1 1/2 miles in to their larger cabin. The woods, she warned me, would be really buggy at this time of evening.

I hate mosquitoes with a passion, and we were exhausted, so I opted for the smaller cabin. My only concern was that the beds are located in the loft, which requires climbing a steep ladder and then crossing to the platform on a pair of planks attached to the beams, Swiss Family Robinson-style. Oh yeah, Mike added, watch out for the guns next to the mattress, even though they’re not loaded.

I managed to coax the Bug up the ladder and across the planks by encouraging his delusion that he is actually not a boy, but an alley cat. It was beyond hellishly hot up there, two inches from the ceiling. Still, I figured we’d survive one night.

“Goodnight and good luck,” we called, as our hosts left for their death march across the woods. Thank god we didn’t go with them, I thought to myself with a yawn.

And then the buzzing began.

“MOSQUITOES!” I shrieked, prompting the Bug to thrash around in terror. Then I realized that complete panic was not going to help him get to sleep, so I quickly added, in what I hoped was a soothing voice, “Don’t worry, there’s just a couple of them.” Incredibly, the Bug did not cry or complain - he was too tired. But as soon as we closed our eyes and lay still, it began again, that persistent, nightmarish whine right by our ears.

I sat bolt upright, banging my head on the ceiling. “I hear you, YOU BLOODSUCKING JERKS!” I hollered, swatting madly at the air. The trouble is, in stessful situations, it’s really hard for me to remember not to curse like Jay in all those Kevin Smith movies. And it’s not easy to express adult rage coherently in Four Year Old.

“I’ll get you, you insolent TOENAIL-LICKER!” The Bug rolled himself up in the sheet like an enchilada and lay there, laughing hysterically, as I smashed one mosquito, then another, into the ceiling. “You want a piece of me? Take THAT, you stinky flying BUMHEAD!”

At last, worn out, I flopped back onto my pillow. The Bug had fallen silent by then, either asleep or comatose from lack of air in his mummified state. However, every couple of minutes, probably because of a mosquito buzzing in his ear, he twitched the kind of full-body seizure that made me worry that he was going to twitch himself right off the bed and into the living room ten feet below. Occasionally, he would giggle in his sleep at the sound of my hands sending yet another little asshole vampire to its death.

Meanwhile I lay awake in the grey light, staring up at the now blood-covered ceiling. It was a veritable galaxy of dead mosquitoes up there. I could clearly make out the Big Dipper and Casseopeia in little crushed bodies, and even a bloody Red Planet. And yet the pesky fuckers (hey, the Bug was asleep) continued to buzz the minute I felt myself drifting off.

In desperation, I constructed a tent for my face using my arm, a pillow and the corner of the sheet that I could wrest from the Bug. This worked until my arm began to throb horribly from the weight of my head. Then I panicked from not being able to breathe. Gasping, I opened a tiny tunnel for air. A mosquito promptly bit my nose. Outside the tent the buzzing continued, at different unharmonious pitches.

As the hours passed, I thought of the bajillions of mosquitoes just outside the window, and the fact that a caribou on the tundra might run till it dies, driven mad by biting swarms. I wondered if mosquitoes served ANY purpose at all in the world. I vowed to make worms on toast every morning for the birds if only, by some miracle, all the mosquitoes in the world would just disappear. I contemplated whether it was humanly possible to stifle oneself to death with a pillow.

I never did fall asleep. My fevered imagination conjured up movie scenes of enormous, unbeatable onslaught - the Orcs in “Lord of the Rings”, the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” Malaria, dengue fever, encephalitis, West Nile virus… I could feel my brain swelling. There would be no end to this night. Ever. The buzzing…!

By the time the sun slanted weakly through the window again, my eyeballs were darting around in my skull, just like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining”. The Bug woke up to find me crazed and sweating, babbling incoherent nonsense while my face muscles spasmed. His own little face was covered in red bites, but his eyes were merry. “What’s the matter, Mama?”

“It was a bloodbath,” I croaked. “Can’t you hear that sound?”

He gave me a funny look. “Mama, dat’s an AIRPLANE.”

“They want you to think that,” I panted. “It’s all part of the plot.”

Then I thought, Get a hold of yourself, woman. Surely the loss of a pint or two of blood can’t be enough to make you lose your grip on reality. So I got up and made him breakfast, and we spent a glorious day with our friends down at the gravel bar on the river. We saw a grizzly bear’s pawprint larger than my foot, and the Bug happily played naked in the warm, silty mud. All in all, a wonderful couple of days.

If only that buzzing sound would go away.