Virginia is for Bugs
As a preemptive sidebar, I have to say that I never really understood the whole Virginia if for Lovers thing. I mean... to me it sounds like the tourism board is saying Virginia is Awesome for Illicit Affairs! Or maybe Virginia Don't Ask Questions When You Check Into the Motel on Route 460. (Though apparently it's working, with Virginia being the 10th most visited state by tourists. I suspect a large number of those peeps are just heading across the river to Arlington cemetery. But whatever). I must admit never having visited the state with someone I would have called a "lover." Nor am I really a lover of many things Virginian. (I like the fried pickles. And uhm.... I like gardening in zone 7... and... uhm...).
One of the things that one simply must learn to love while in Virginia: bugs. It's a buggy state. No, no... whatever you're thinking, it isn't even close. You, sadly, you are thinking double As. Whatever it is. Virginia is major league. No, no, no... mira. I lived in a place where these were for sale at the market as a snack:
(Very squirty. Not recommended). And where, if you wanted, you could have tarantula:
I lived there for a good long time, and I liked it. A lot. And there were bugs. There were mosquitoes that might give you malaria (happily avoided) or dengue (unhappily not avoided). And water bugs that one could have taken as transport to Taiwan. And yet, my bug problems in Southeast Asia were not in the same league as Virginia.
It all started with a photograph. I really really wanted to take some pictures of an abandoned church in rural VA.
When we got home, we checked each other for ticks. Tally: me, 2; P. 4. He's bigger, so I suppose that's proportional. TICKS. I've never had a tick on me before. Eeeeee. Ticks. But wait! There's more! Yes. More.
This was Friday night. I woke up saturday morning with a big itchy bump on my arm. With a red blotch. That got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. You know what that was? Spider bite! And where did I get it? In bed! In my house!
Two days later I am unbearably itchy. All over. Bumps everywhere.... because besides the ticks there were... chiggers! Gawd, horrible. Never had those before, either. CHIGGERS, people. They are a pox, a plague, a pestilence. Horrible.
Meanwhile, I am twice daily beseiged by the mosquitoes, who swoop in to devour me (or at least drink my blood), twice a day, whenever I water then garden. Horrible. I am itchy. Chiggermosquitospiderbite itchy ALL THE TIME. Whatever good will towards the state I may have built up was sucked out of me by the various bloodsucking pests that dominate my summer-in-virginia life. No lovers here, thankee.
All this, because I was getting my artist on.
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