I’ve had a sleepless week mostly due to athe presence of pesky mosquitoes in the apartment . I had the same problem strangely enough last October only then it was so bad it reached Amityville Horror proportions. I was hunting down and exterminating half a dozen mosquitoes a night. I was half crazed with lack of sleep to the extent that my friends were beginning to doubt me with questions like “Has anyone else actually seen these mosquitoes?” It was a terrible time for me and just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended and all was forgotten. Until this past week that is when I started hearing that un-mistakable buzzing around my head. Even Bingo was annoyed by them and would quickly jump off the bed and sleep underneath where they don’t bother him. The biggest problem is that once I am awake and even killed the mosquito if I am lucky, I simply cannot fall back to sleep. I just lie there for hours with my head filled with thought until the sun comes up and I drift off for an hour or two before I have to really wake up. Strangely enough in those hours I’ve been dreaming about squirrels; my squirrels as a matter of fact, chewing through the screens and coming into my apartment which believe it or not has happened more than once. It is not a continuation of the Mosquito Amityville Horror but a direct result of my own behaviour. I have a family of 4 squirrels in the courtyard that I feed off the fire escape.
Daisy is the matriarch who has been coming around for about 3 years. Pip and Skippy are her children who were born last February or March and then there is the mysterious fourth squirrel who appears but is always greeted with hissing and squeaking from Daisy who is very territorial. They are the jolliest of all creatures and watching their antics always brightens even the darkest of days. Daisy will actually come to the window sill of my studio to implore me through some sort of mind control to feed her. I can feel her beady little eyes boring into me from behind and I must obey. She is the only one I feed by hand as she knows the rules about chewing through the screen. A rule Pip seems to finally get after several successful attempts to enter the apartment. I hope my landlord never notices the patches upon patches on all my screens, I will have a hard time explaining that away. Anyway it is most likely when I am opening the screens to feed the squirrels and birds that the mosquitoes are getting in so you see it does all tie in together nicely at the end.
