It was all going so well.

Until the lord of darkness unleashed his legions of flying hypodermic insect drones upon us.

Sitting by the Snowy River we had noticed a steady increase in mosquito activity as the sun set. Once the Aeroguard spray proved ineffective we decided to retreat into Ripley for dinner.

That was quite fine until a little later when I opened the door to take Juno out for a pee. A tsunami of black speck winged terror surged through the open door.

It was a moment or two until I actually realised what was going on. An unfortunate hesitation that gave ample time for a couple of hundred mozzies to flood in and set up strategic air bases around Ripley..from whence they would spend the rest of the night launching frenzied blood-sucking sorties against us.

We had no insect spray. There was no point moving, the enemy was within. Our only defence was to cover ourselves with even more repellant, batten down the hatches and hide under the covers.

The persistent dissonant buzzing of incoming attacks was sustained and infuriating. Just as I would doze off, one would fly into my ear. Or up my nose. Or worse. Eventually, I could stand it no longer.

In the torchlight, I could see mosquitoes all over the ceiling. Their bloated Rosé abdomens reminded me of when I was a kid and we used to go to the chemist and buy boxes of condoms that we would fill with water and then leave hanging on the door handles of classrooms because that was apparently hilarious at the time.

Only this wasn’t hilarious and this wasn’t water…this was our blood.

So it was that at sometime past 2 am, I sorta lost the plot for a while.
Jumping around Ripley in only my underpants like some crazed eye-twitching ninja. Wielding a rolled-up magazine and attempting to dispatch as many mozzies as I could because this was war and I was now an anaemic crazy-man. Amen and amen motherfuckers. HAHaHahahaHAHA!

Kelly stayed scrunched up under the covers & tried her best to comfort Juno who was a little concerned about this turn of events and was probably thinking he should admit himself to the RSPCA at first light for re-adoption.

Swipe-miss. Swipe….miss. Splat. Swipe miss. Splat.

And so it went. A few minutes of restless interrupted sleep, then a retaliatory frenzy of spotlight seek and destroy.

By morning I think I had dispatched about 70% of the swarm (not bad don’t you think?)

We were both exhausted, a whole lot wiser and peppered with itchy mozzie reminders.

OK then. Let’s take some measured precautions. Today’s shopping list:

• Flyspray (low irritant).
• DEET insect repellant.
• 200 AGM-84E surface to air missiles.

It’s business time.