With the record setting wetness that we've had here since about, oh...November, I knew it was going to be a bad year for those little spawns of Satan, but I wasn't expecting this. The hatch went off yesterday, and they are now thick.

A couple of years ago we got a boatload of snow and it was an unusually wet spring. That June, the skeeters were deadly, but only after around 1500. Before that you could be outside nekkid and not get stabbed, but at 1500 you'd better have the DEET slathered on or be indoors. Thankfully, once July rolled around it had dried up enough that they were all gone.

This year is going to be worse. Saturday I was out in the garden fortress all day. No skeeters. Sunday was a whole different story. From 0800-1000, no issues. After 10? They ran me out of there. Today? I got out there at 0700 and at 0800 I was done. Up my nose, in my ears, everywhere.

I'm happy I thought ahead a few weeks ago and ordered up a shit-ton of refills for my Thermacells.

Come on July. Get here already.

Do those Thermacells work pretty well?

I hate skeeters about as much as anything. They do a pretty good job of controlling them down here, given that we live next to the Everglades, but one is too many as far as I'm concerned.

Thermacells are about the only thing that will allow me to be out on the deck in the evenings when the skeeters are out.

They work great for me.

When bowhunting season rolls around, my Thermacell stays on in the blind. Without it, I get eaten alive by the little bastards, but with it on I almost never get bitten.

If there is a Satan - it's made of equal parts of Cheegroes, Skeeters, and Humidity.

I remember pulling up to the Best Western in Glasgow, MT one summer after traveling for a good 30 hours straight (towards West Glacier).

My sisters stepped out of the motor home and suddenly started flailing their arms around and screaming, and took off running for the front door. It was a literal wall of mosquitos everywhere you turned.