Too many bugs!

Several weeks ago I made a goal to be more diligent in contributing to the blog. Well I guess it is time to start. Many of you have been asking me about my job in Washington where I spent my time hunting down and killing mosquitoes, so today I'll give you a synopsis of the daily routine.

Every morning a group of 6-8 workers would meet at the shop where we would receive our morning announcements and assignments. We then went out to different areas in side the county lines and looked for mosquitoes, in their different stages (egg raft, larvae, pupa, and adult), and treated those areas accordingly. The job itself was very straight forward and not complicated at all, but what was difficult for me was learning the surrounding area and getting used to the different creatures I would encounter along the way. (It's probably good for you to understand at this point that I don't like bugs, snakes, spiders, etc.)

Well, it isn't very hard to guess that I had a few encounters with some different wild creatures. If you look at the pictures below you can see exactly what I saw this summer.

A lot of cows - never get between a mom and her calf!

goats

It seemed like horses were everywhere

Frogs in almost every pond

You never knew when you would walk across a rattlesnake - You just had to listen for the rattle

I had to check myself every day to see if I had any ticks attached to me. I made it through the summer tick free!

On my last week of work I was stung by three wasps.

I could write a much loner list of everything I saw but this should give you an idea of what I saw during the summer. Because I don't like half of the creatures I told you about I spent most of my time trying to avoid them, which was nearly impossible. When I wasn't running away from bugs I was looking for mosquitoes. Here are some more pictures that show what I was looking for.

It might be hard to see but if you look close you can see all of the mosquito larvae. If I found some of these in my dipper then I would get the appropriate larvacide and spray the mosquitoes. Like I said earlier, the job wasn't too difficult but I definitely gained a better appreciation for those who do this all the time. Just imagine if no one killed the mosquitoes. You'd be scratching all summer long.That about wraps it up for now. In the next few days I'll try to write down what life is like down in Houston. I start my first day of school tomorrow and am really excited to start teaching. I'll keep y'all posted.