Cabin Fever 4: House Fever: Seven Hour Fever: After That You're Fine

            Mosquitoes have been a minor inconvenience to me for all of my life, but never more so than yesterday, when they trapped us in the house with poison gas.

            Okay, technically we trapped us in the house with poison gas.  Mosquitoes have yet to think up poison gas technology, thankfully, but one of the little geniuses in my area did come up with the great idea to start carrying West Nile Virus. I can only imagine how it pitched that to the other mosquitoes.

            Mosquito 1: Hey guys, I have a great idea! What if I get West Nile Virus, which will cause the humans to panic when they discover me, and panic and try to kill us all!

                  Mosquito 2: I don’t know.  For one thing, I don’t want to die.  Also, as a mosquito, I am just as incapable of judging that idea as you are of formulating it.  We’re dumb.  You probably just contracted that disease through some unfortunate happenstance.

                  Mosquito 1: Bzzz.

                  Mosquito 2: Bzzz.

                  Mosquito 3: We seem very inconsistent.

            Well, the joke’s on them.  Trucks mosquito-fogged our neighborhood with an insecticide, during which time we remained inside because breathing poison is probably not great.  We spent the whole afternoon preparing: we closed windows, ineffectually put tarps over our produce (they claim it’ll just wash off, but my parents are hippies and there have been a few concerning investigations about it so whatever.  I don’t eat tomatoes anyway) and got pizza.  Eventually, the harbinger arrived, a small truck with a yellow siren and a shrill beeping alert, spewing a foggy cloud behind it.  We were trapped until the morning.

            And it’s really not that bad.  I mean, yeah, it’s a little stuffy, but considering that we’re being gassed it’s pretty tolerable.  At first, my ability to handle a stir-crazy situation made me proud.  I was able to watch Futurama reruns and sit on the couch like a badass.  Then the TV went off, but I was still fine.  I was able to watch Justice League on my computer and even go to the bathroom without crying due to the hardship.

            But the impetus for this piece was the realization I had as I sat on my bed, staring dazed at my computer screen: I’m only calm because of the internet.  Of course, this is true all of the time.  And unlike the fogey editorial writers who make a living saying my generation is bad because blah blah trophies and scary computers, I don’t think growing accustomed to such an amazing tool is a bad thing.  But this realization did diminish the narrative of Sam, badass guy who handles being trapped really well, and is also heartbreakingly beautiful.

            No, the only real badass guy around here is Sheriff Neighbor, the scarecrow.  He was transferred to porch duty after my parents realized that bird netting (or “soulless string-drones,” as he calls it) is way more effective at scaring birds.  We warned him about the gas, but he just turned to me and said, “No.  Gas-mask wearing birds could try a flank-attack.  I’m staying.”  He’s still out there, in the poison mist, and I don’t know if he’ll still be there tomorrow.  I’m going to look at myself in the mirror until I feel heartbreakingly beautiful again, and then go to bed.