Mosquitos

My first real confrontation with mosquitos was when I first went to Germany. There was a rather big window in front of a rather big garden where I slept and my girlfriend would leave the window open not only during the day but also at night. "Wir brauchen Luft", that was it, basta, no discussion and then they would come; ...."zzzzzz, ..zzzzzzzz, ...zzz". In Germany I discovered that mosquitos can be quite big and reasonably noisy; at night they would buzz into my ear, drive me crazy, buzz back out again, then stop humming and that I knew was when they were sucking my blood. Of course, I couldn't sleep and up I would get, close the doors and the windows and lo and behold there it was, sitting on the white walls, normally above the bed, a massive mosquito that looked as if it had a beer belly. After a time, I would normally manage to hit it and in doing so splatter blood all over the white walls. There was usually enough blood for two heart transplantations and at the end of every summer the walls were papered and painted.
In 1995, I worked in Bangladesh and that is where I discovered that there were very small mosquitos and not only could you not see them, you also couldn't hear them and, in fact, you didn't even notice them until half of your leg was gone and when you did notice them and put on the light you just couldn't see them. The mosquitos have arrived in Suzhou and I have still to classify them; my leg is covered in lumps but there is no blood on my walls. Still, there was a distinct buzzing in my ear last night. but when I woke up, closed the door and threw the light on, I just couldn't find anything.