Those pesky little creatures

My personal best score is an astounding 20, of what? If you may ask, I am not talking about basketball or cricket. No Sir, it’s something that’s for sure going to make you laugh if not a little surprised. Well let me end the suspense, it’s at killing these pesky little creatures, known as mosquitoes, with my bare hands! It all started about three weeks back and has now developed in to a full fledged hobby, and I just keep getting better at it with each passing day. That, my house is in the countryside has further helped in honing my slaying skills. That particular day, about three weeks back when the weather had turned hot, we experienced a sudden influx of these pests in our house. As I sat down on the toilet seat with a Copy of the day’s newspaper in my hands I saw one glide past me at full throttle, giving me that “catch me if you can” kind of look. That was more than I could take, “clap” was the sound that came, it was almost instinctive, sudden and deadly, resultantly, the little creature was dead in my very hands. That day I killed about five of them in a span of fifteen minutes, until “the wife” rose from deep sleep due to the sudden clapping sound coming from the bathroom! Now why would a sane man want to clap 5 am in the morning that was kind of hard to explain to the lady.
         The next day I killed about seven of them, and the next ten, and from them on my score has been improving. Not that we did not try conventional methods, I mean we did use FINIS, and then those “anti-mosquito coils” and now finally we are on to that “liquid thing”, that works for sixty days at a stretch. But the fact is, I find the temptation too hard to resist. I mean imagine a fully grown mosquito gliding past you, I mean it only takes a second, and that great satisfaction that comes at killing one, VOW, it’s like hitting a four or a six maybe. And now that the skills are refined I even know their hiding places! The first round usually takes place near the toilet seat, for it here that I normally find four or five of them hiding under that fat big pipe that is supposed to carry all that stuff, you know what I mean. Then it’s the wash basin, sometimes five or six maybe more if I am lucky. And finally come the walls, sticking on to them these guys seem fast asleep in the wee hours of the morning. But now after all these days the ones on the walls are sticking there, dried  up off course, but still there, a reminder of the carnage that left them dead.
         And wait till I tell you of the one who didn’t die, he just fainted, until I picked him up, borrowed my daughter’s magnifying glass and had a good look at him through it. What features he had, believe me, if there was some way of making a life sized model of him it would scare the wits out of most of us. Now I know why they have name like Aedes albopictus or even, Anopheles quadrimaculatus! Oh and yes, I even made a record of killing three of them in successive three claps, I still haven’t been able to break that one, frankly because I have so far not been able to find more than three flying in close formation since then. Maybe its their SOP(standard operating procedures) , not to fly in groups exceeding three at a  time.
         I personally believe they talk to less amongst themselves, this a very valid observation, I can explain this, a number of times it happened so that a few of them got away, just changed course before the deadly clap killed them, the sped fast soared to the ceiling and landed there upside down. But then, the rest of them stayed where they were, an ample proof that they had not been warned by their absconding friends. Had they been warned they would have certainly followed suit and settled on the ceiling (up side down), but that did not happen and most of the remaining got killed. That is very unlike, the birds should I say.
         Now the wife has also joined me in killing them, for it has for us become a house-sport. The kids although lack the swiftness required but I am training them hard for the “mosquito killing tournament” that we are planning to organize on a monthly basis. The scoring is simple, the rules straight forward. Each player will be entitled a bathroom of his/her choice, to start with. A fixed time of five minutes will be allotted to all the contestants and in that he/she will have to kill as many mosquitoes as he/she can. A straight two points will be awarded for a kill. A missed mosquito would mean deduction of a single point. And now we have introduced “the single hand maneuver”, in that the contestant will be awarded four points if he/she can kill the bird with one hand! The rules set, we are now busy refining our skills for the contest date is fast approaching and I still have to master “the single hand maneuver”.  Wish me luck people.