more delightful poison

So they’re dusting my neighborhood for mosquitoes (because of West Nile Virus). Again. I had to rush home from YSA volleyball at the stake center to walk the dog and shut up all the doors and windows so that stuff doesn’t come inside. The dusting should be starting any minute now. At least this time it’s not so creepy because my house isn’t ground zero. But that means someone else’s house is ground zero. And they’re probably creeped out right now. I know that they’re just trying to prevent West Nile Virus, but I can’t help wondering how this pesticide stuff is going to hurt us in the long run. Meanwhile I hope someone out there is working on a cure. Or some kind of vaccine. I read on Wikipedia that there are three possibilities in terms of West Nile symptoms in people. The first and most common has no symptoms. The second (and somewhat less common) is called West Nile Fever, and looks pretty much like the flu: lasts a week, fever, aches and chills, swollen lymph nodes, etc. The third and most scary, but least common, is called West Nile Meningitis, and is as bad as it sounds. This is the one that has got us all paranoid. It can infect the spinal cord (in rare cases) and is mostly characterized by a lower level of consciousness and hyperactive “deep tendon reflexes,” followed by “long convalescence with fatigue.” I imagine it can kill kids and seniors.

Why did I include information about the symptoms (based on only slightly legitimate research)? In my personal experience, knowing more about something makes you fear it less. When I didn’t know what kind of havoc West Nile could wreak on my body, I was a lot more afraid. But now that I know what I’m up against, I’m okay. I can handle this. But I’m still afraid of the pesticide.

The Angel of Death

Last night, at a quarter to eleven, we shut off our attic fan, closed all our windows, and put the metal slat down so our dog couldn’t go out through the doggie door. Soon we could hear the hum of the helicopter up above, dusting the poison meant for West Nile-laden mosquitoes over our heads, and we could smell the faintest hint of chemicals seeping into the house. My fanciful imagination and I couldn’t help thinking it was the angel of death from Moses’ day passing over us (see Exodus 12:22-29). Except there was no blood on our lintel. And for just a moment, I thought someone might come in today to find us dead in our beds.

(And that’s funny I should think of Moses when the point of the poison is to eradicate West Nile Virus, which also came out of Egypt, it sounds like)

Fanciful imagination notwithstanding, I made it through the night alive. And so did my family. And so did everyone else in the neighborhood, I guess. Well, hopefully not the mosquitoes.

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.