My back is covered in mosquito bites that itch like hell, as are my hands, feet, and legs. They are swollen and many, and they have not subsided much in the two says since I acquired them in a backyard in Houston. They bit me right through my jeans, for Christ's sake.
It's been an unusually wet and mosquitoey summer in Austin, and I have complained about it mightily. Still, I have never experienced anything like this, not even when the sad little creek behind my house was sour and stagnant and the pool at the empty house next door was green with algae and visibly roiling with larvae.
This minor but exceptionally itchy incident does nothing to dispel the unfair and vague but unshakable impression that everything in Houston--from the wildlife to its strip malls--is giant and vicious and mutated. Except, of course, my friends, who are slender and kind and have no genetic abnormalities that I am aware of.