Tag Archives: Summer

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES from the tiniest thing! by Anne Stewart Helton

With so many big, scary things going on in life, it can be challenging to not worry and think about what will happen about this or that. But it is said that sometimes it’s the littlest things that can cause the most havoc. A slip in a small puddle evokes a trip to the emergency room; a squeaky door wakes up a sick, crying baby or a tiny nail causes a major blowout on the freeway! But a Mosquito?…. come on, really?

Mosquitoes are tiny, sneaky, vicious creatures that can transmit country killing diseases. They have been around for millions of years and can carry malaria, dengue virus, West Nile-virus and also carry and pass on heart-worms to dogs. In some countries protection from the Mosquito is a daily fight, much like seeking water, food or shelter.  But, for most of us the Mosquito is a pesky six-legged, low flying, buzzing feeder that slides one tube of its’ proboscis into the skin to draw our blood with a second tube to inject its’ saliva which contains a painkiller and an anti-coagulant to easily take out our blood. It is their saliva that causes us to swell and itch. And it is the female Mosquito that does the biting to get our protein rich blood to help her eggs develop.

Most people have a mild reaction to Mosquito bites but some people suffer more, leading to red swelling bumps, major itching and even infections from scratching! My Husband is one of those people.

He claims that he can go outside with other people and they will bite him and no one else. I have seen that he does seem to be bitten more often when others are not. Thus, he has been on a quest for years to detract, well… to actually kill, Mosquitoes. He hates to use any chemicals that could hurt other creatures and won’t even fertilize our yard to prevent harming the environment. Thus, he has had every contraption imaginable to zap them, spray them, repel them and shoo them away. His favorite being the handy-dandy battery operated zapper because he can hear them fry when they are zapped. He bought two of those!

In his quest for Mosquito termination he is susceptible to new ideas and inventions. So along came the no chemical Dynatrap, his latest environs-friendly trial. First he installed one in the back yard and waited for the collection of the evil ones. The tray did fill up but it also caught and killed a few nice bugs too! But anyway we proceeded to try it and then he decided maybe we should get a smaller one for the front porch too. That’s when the unintended consequence occurred.

As Hubby went to hang and plug in the small front porch contraption, he ran the plug cord along the gap by the side of the Garage door. No problem, it worked fine. But then to test it we ran the Garage door up and down a few times and began to hear some very loud squeaking. The cord wasn’t caught or rubbing and the Trap was hanging fine.

So we sprayed good ol’ WD-40 on all the gears and bolts of the Garage door and decided it was just getting old. However, as we walked out of the Garage we heard another loud cracking noise and noticed that the metal bar holding the Garage door opener on the ceiling was hanging from the ceiling and all of the Garage doors’ parts were torqued toward disaster. So, as I called repair companies, who were all too busy to come out, Hubby quickly climbed up on a ladder and proceeded to hold up the very heavy motor and brace bar with one arm, with me playing surgical assistant handing him tools. He finally succeeded and re-bolted the Garage door opener and all parts back into the ceiling with his other arm.

After securing the Garage door, he relaxed but then proceeded on his mission to check his Mosquito Traps all the while telling me how he had read that Mosquitoes like some human blood types more than others; how they bite at certain times of the day; and how they like sugar in the blood or people who drank beer or wore certain colored shirts, etc.

I listened and then told him I had also read that they like and are definitely drawn to CO2 (which is exactly what his fancy new Trap emits) and that people who talked a lot...about Mosquitoes...emitted lots of CO2 when they talked.  Well, he just looked at me…speechless.

So, he checked his Trap and low and behold he found one of our sweet Geckos dead in the Trap. Our beautiful, ever posing Geckos…which ironically eat Mosquitoes. We also have lots of Dragonflies and even found a baby Opossum hanging around in our yard and they love Mosquitoes too.

 

 

So, for now he will go with the Traps but I’m counting more on my votive candles, Opossums, Dragonflies and the Geckos to do the job. And just in case I keep the Mosquito repellant spray handy and ready because you just never know when a tiny little thing could have unintended consequences!

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“Sizzlin’, Summer, Sun” by Anne Stewart Helton

The jazzy, buzzing, Spring June Bugs have stopped jumping in town and the cicadas are screeching.

It is Summertime. It is Texas.  And. It. Is. Hot.

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As it is written in Ecclesiastes 3- “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens” but every year when the seasonal calendar turns over to Summer, it seems we forget we live in Texas and we are surprised. Its’ like a light switch is turned on and overnight the temperature soars: 92-95-98-then the century mark countdown begins! Old-timers start reflecting on the hotter days of yesteryear, spouting copious stories that usually begin with, “You think this is Hot?? Well, we didn’t have air-conditioning in the summer of_____ (take your pick)”! I have to admit I remember talking about those old days too. As a child, we ate dripping popsicles on the porch, never stayed inside and opened our windows at night, yes, in Houston, Texas of all places. We left the Attic fan on all night long to allow a breeze through the windows until Dad would get up and turn it off to save electricity. Of course, we turned it back on and then the fan wars would begin only to have Mom settle it with Dad. We won!

I remember the perspiration on our pillows and hearing the sounds of the night through our screened windows and sometimes sneaking out to play with neighbors to run through lightning bug filled yards. Yes, in Summer, the Winter and Spring creatures step aside for the dragonflies whizzing by as Sunflowers stretch high while Texas cooks. As the Bible says there is a time for all Seasons, but it also says in Psalms 104:19 “He made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down.” So, we often say okay Sun, it’s HOT, you can go down a little now.

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Y’all need to know, that in Texas when we say HOT we mean devil-type-pitch-fork waving heat! We are known to say “Oh, it’s just the humidity that gets you” but that’s just to compete with our Nevada or Arizona compadres who have the oven type dry heat. But hot is hot . Our Texas heat is the all encompassing overall mirage of waves of heat soaring from concrete that make 98 degrees seem like you are in a desert and should have buzzards circling overhead. We are frequently proud and boastful to pretend Summer doesn’t bother us, after all we are tough Texans, but it is common to see families sneaking away for weeks to Colorado or Cozumel to escape the heat. They may say they are going on vacation but we know what is really going on.

We adapt and change our schedules in Summer….running or walking in early mornings or late evenings, avoiding crowded freeways filled with road-rage-squared drivers waving hot fists in the air and we LOVE our air-conditioning. After all, we did build the world famous, air-conditioned Houston Astrodome before it was fashionable to have indoor stadiums.  The Summer heat also is known to trigger bucket loads of rain drop surprise showers that fill up our bayous and creeks. The thunderstorms leave us with flooded roadways, overgrown elephant ear ditches and hoards of people hungry, whelp producing, skin itching, west nile and zika carrying virus mosquitoes! So, we spray ourselves like safari explorers before we go outside and we zap mosquitoes with every type of mosquito repellent or spray systems invented, most of which work like snake oil! Oh, and we have more snakes after the flooding rains and we even have heat-crazy alligators walking out of ditches and Rivers onto golf courses and into the roads! We also have three species of Copperhead snakes in Texas that show up in groups in the summer.

Yep, one has to be tough to survive Texas summers.

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We learn Wisdom from these tough Texas Summer seasons. The June bugs teach us that what lies dormant in the ground as a grub all year has Hope and can emerge with joy and dancing. The little seed of the sunflowers show us how Patience grows with Faith into Glory from the Summer rains. The elephant ear filled waterways and bayous help slow and “still” the water down to feed the dragonflies, turtles, birds, frogs and even snakes, which are kept in balance by the alligators!! A large population of cicadas can be deafening but soothing as they sing us to sleep at night but beware…a flock of cicadas can be a meal and dessert all in one for Copperhead snakes. So be careful where you walk barefoot when you hear the cicadas screeching. The snakes of Summer teach us caution. Did you know that some Copperhead snakes have a little bit of a greenish-yellow color on the tip of their tail resembling a caterpillar? They coil up and stick their tail up, wiggling it to lure a frog or lizard, then they strike and gobble up their prey. It’s funny, this resembles the song “Smiling Faces” to me, where some people will lure us with fake smiles, pats on the back or pretty words only to strike and devour us too! Yes, the Copperhead snake teaches us caution, as everything may not always be what it seems!  As far as the mosquitoes???  Really Noah, you had to pick two of them too?  Well, I guess we can be grateful that they feed the birds, but as for a benefit to people?….all I can say is at least mosquitoes make us go inside, into our beloved air-conditioning!!

We will weather through this Summer season too and we will enjoy our steaming 4th of July fireworks, wave our wilted Flags, watch neighborhood parades and perspire at bar-b-ques. We will lie down on floats in swimming pools or close to sprinkler heads in our yards, if necessary. We will drive to Galveston Beaches or the Hill Country lakes and Rivers for cooling breezes and water sports. We will watch our flowers and gardens turn brown and scorch and we will watch and wait for possible Hurricanes that eventually may form in the bath-tub like heated water of the Gulf of Mexico. We will get through this Season with our own stories of the Summer of 2016 with a lesson of gratefulness that we have the Seasons, the weather, the creatures and the memories to carry in our hearts to pass on to others in our own stories that may start with: “You think you’re hot now?? Why, in 2016, our summer was…..(take your pick)!!”

AnneOnBeach

 

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