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.

We stayed by a lake in Eth for a night or two and I was scared of mosquitos there, but we stayed unbitten. We did get a flea later on the trip at a different locale and that was no fun.

shirft, I too had a tick bite, of which my brother loves to remind.

A moose bit my sister once.

ooohhhhh CHIGGERS. ugh.