I was nine, and on the playground in NY, when I met someone who was stung by her very first mosquito. She was completely freaking out and losing it (for no real reason other than it's unpleasant), and I couldn't stop staring at her, just befuddled. Since I came from Miami, the land of at least five bites a day, usually hundreds a week if you were my brother, I honestly couldn't fathom why she was making such a huge deal about it. And I even had an uncle die from encephalitis. And when I tried to calm her down, and explain that mosquito bites are no big deal at all, just X it and put some alcohol on it when you go home, she (and the other girls nearby) yelled at me and said I was totally mean and I could not really understand how awful this was for her.

And I was kind of stumped. Because I truly didn't understand why it was so very awful.

because they were overdramatic 9 year old NY girls.

ouchy, msbelle!

I have always felt like a bee wimp, but now with the rose garden we have bees and wasps buzzing around all summer. I think I mentioned the wasp nest on our back porch last summer.

because they were overdramatic 9 year old NY girls.

From Long Island, no less! Yeah, I eventually learned that lesson, but the memory is still so clear because I was so very baffled by her. And her friends.

I've been stung by honeybees, hornets, yellow jackets, and wasps. And bitten by mosquitoes, horseflies, black flies, ants, some aquatic insects I choose not to investigate, and just once, a tick.

I attempted to get leeches to bite me, but they weren't the people sucking kind. I was sad.

I've been stung by bees, bitten by fleas, and also by mosquitoes. And probably other things I don't want to think about.

I have never been stung by a wasp, about which I remain happy. Nor have I ever been swooped by a magpie, about which I am inordinately proud.

I've been hornswaggled by a killdeer.

Everybody in the South, everybody in the Caribbean. All of Mexico and South America. Africa. India. Just to start. Not getting bitten in those places would be the rarity.

I used to think scorpions killed, and I woke up one night to find my father had just been attacked by one in the bathroom and we got sent back to bed. I was sure I'd wake up to a dead father. Not a good night.

So your mosquito odds are good, but watch the diseases around where you're hanging.

I wonder if bee sting is a venom and not a poison. Venoms have to go right into the bloodstream--you can drink rattlesnake venom enough to kill ten people if betten and suffer no ill effects.

The total worst was the horseflies in lake area Quebec. Big beasties and you feel the bite. I mostly don't feel getten bitten by mosquitos. Which is good, because most of the antimosquito stuff gives me a migraine. Oh, and then there are sandflies. Tricksy puppies.