I am content being irresistible to one Dominican female.
But, as always seems to happen to me when we visit my wife’s house in Santo Domingo, my cross-species allure asserts itself: mosquitoes there love me.
My wife didn’t get bitten at all, so far as we can tell. My son got bitten once.
I have nineteen bites. These are red, angry bumps that itch like the devil’s ass and represent biters undeterred by Off spray. And how the hell do they bite through socks??
Maybe a wish I made as a teenager has been fulfilled by a malicious djinn? I probably didn’t specify I meant HUMAN females.
Why do they come after me and not anyone else, and how can I dissuade them?
One possibility is that the other people got bitten, but didn’t have the same reaction as you. I usually feel an initial itching when I get bitten, but I generally don’t develop the raised bumps that itch for a long time.
One way to prevent them from becoming itchy is to apply heat to the bite. The heat breaks down the chemical that causes the itching. There’s this Therapik device which you can use. I can verify it works. My daughter also seems to attract mosquitoes and the Therapik prevents the bites from developing any further. I’ve also used a hair drier to apply heat to the bite and that works too. You’ll want to make the area hot, but not so hot you burn yourself.
Sixty years ago, I worked for three years in a biochem lab and never got bit while I was there. But I left 57 years ago and I still get bit only rarely. And never get any reaction from the bites either. My father worked with chemicals most of his adult life and never got bit. I can understand that the chemicals on his skin might have discouraged the beasts, but the effect seems to have lasted 57 years in my case. Go figure.
Note that during the summer in the U.S., I get bit no more and no less than the average. It’s only the Dominican mosquitos that seem to have this favoritism.
The socks are tight to the skin and aren’t really that dense. I always assumed a part of the protection of clothing was standoff distance more than it being bite proof. Interesting link about the length of the probiscus - looks like 2.5-3.5mm for the most common varieties at typical size. Given the thickness of some of the socks here it seems like it is possible to reach skin through socks.
I’d swear I once got bit through the canvas side of a jungle boot and a wool sock. Even with the giant mosquitoes that swarmed me for hours before that seems unlikely. It sure looked like a bite though and the itching started in the middle of that hellacious night without ever removing my boots.
As others have said, mosquitoes follow a scent trail and there’s something you’re emitting that’s attracting them. It could be something you eat or drink or something on your skin like soap, deodorant, or cologne. You might try experimenting to see if you can figure out what the chemical trigger is.
Well, I can relate.
In one day of hiking in China I picked up more than 30 bites, when other hikers just had a handful, and our guide had none. I was wearing Raid mosquito spray (I assume it was mosquito repellant, but given the results maybe it was a sweet mosquito perfume).
One of the bites later led to cellulitis (a skin infection), and the antibiotic I took for that had the side effect that I got candida (a throat infection). I’m mentioning all this just to emphasize how much the mosquitoes pwned me that day.
I doubt it’s related to food, soap, etc… Being bitten or not by mosquitoes seems consistent over the course of one’s life, from the anecdotal experience I have with friends/family (I belong to the “not bitten” category), and people don’t always eat the same thing, use the same soap, etc… I suspect it’s something inherent to individual people body chemistry. I’ve been told many times it’s related to skin acidity, but I don’t know if it’s true, or even if “skin acidity” actually means something.
I have lived in the woods most of my life, and I have a fifteen minute itch from mosquito bites, but no welts. Perhaps being bitten often in the past gives me a reduced reaction.
I’ve wondered about this. When I was a kid, I used to have a typical reaction to bites, but I was only occasionally exposed to mosquitoes. Then my family moved to Florida and I got bit all the time. Eventually, I stopped having the typical reaction to the bites.