Ecstatic in the Poison

…The white clouds tumbled down our streets
pursued by spellbound children
who chased the most distorting clouds,
ecstatic in the poison.

Andrew Hudgins, “In,” Ecstatic in the Poison

I promise you, four posts in a day is highly unusual for me and probably won’t be repeated any time soon. But I have one more thing on my mind. A few days ago my family received a green flier on our door informing us that mosquitoes in our neighborhood have tested positive for West Nile Virus and that they’ll (I’m assuming “they” is the Santa Clara County board of health or something like that) be dusting tomorrow night to thin the mosquito population. Apparently they’ve already treated large bodies of standing water to get rid of mosquito larvae. Well we didn’t realize until tonight that the house next door to us is ground zero for the dusting. We came home from walking the dog to find a van parked in front of our next-door neighbors with a telescopic tower with some kind of transmitter thing on the top, the purpose of which is to guide the dusting plane right to us. Last year they dusted in our general neighborhood for the same reason, and that time the fliers warned us to keep the windows shut, etc., during dusting time. This time the fliers said nothing except that they were dusting and there was supposed to be an informational meeting at city hall tonight. Which of course we missed because we hadn’t cared too much until we saw the AIRPLANE TOWER.

My mom talked to one of the workers setting up this tower thing, and he said they are not telling the public everything they should about this dusting business. He said it’s poison and that it made him really sick once, so sick that he couldn’t return to work for days. He told us to keep our windows shut and to rinse all our flowers and plants and garden vegetables off really well the next day before touching anything. And he said that he’d be angry and upset if he were us. What I want to know is, why didn’t they put this information in the flier? An informational meeting is not good enough, because not everyone has the time or the presence of mind or the motivation to go to one. They are dropping poison on us and the best thing they can do is hold a meeting? And I keep thinking of my next-door neighbors on the other side, with a newborn baby that’s a week old at the most. What are they supposed to do? And what about pets that are usually outside at that hour? What about raccoons and opossums and the toads in the creek?

But I guess if the poison doesn’t kill us, the West Nile Virus will.