Keiran's World

“Incredible,” she said. “It’s evening, we’re eating outside, and THERE ARE NO MOSQUITOS. We’d never be able to do this down east. We’d be eaten alive.”

“it’s Victoria’s secret,” I told her. “If the rest of the country knew how few and how lame our mosquitos were, we’d be overrun.”

When Nature Boy and I moved to Victoria from Small Prairie Town, Alberta, we marveled at the lack of window screens in houses here.

It wasn’t until summer that we learned the reason. Victoria, we discovered in our own screenless home, boasted many annoying flies, huge spiders, and endless trails of tiny ants, but few nippers and biters.

Hooray! Nature Boy cheered, and promptly went out and fired up the barbecue. He’s one of those useful people the rest of us like to have around in mosquito-infested territories. The bugs love him above all other warm-blooded animals within carbon dioxide-sniffing distance. It’s just part of his animal magneticism.

We’d discovered another reason to be smug about living here.

But we don’t talk about it. Not only would the rest of Canada not believe us, but we wouldn’t want to call down the wrath of the gods by boasting about our good fortune or anything.

Continue reading this piece at the Victoria Times Colonist….