Get Out of the Kitchen

I have to find a new place to shoot sunsets. "The Kitchen," the county-owned preserve area along Tampa Bay where I usually go, is simply too mosquito infested. I go there because it's the closest place to me where I can get an unobstructed view of the horizon.

However the mosquitoes seem impervious to bug repellent. The many stagnant pools of water provide perfect breeding grounds. And the time to shoot the cloudscapes that happen around dusk happen to be the time when the blood-sucking disease spreaders are most active.

At one point last night I thought they were simply going to lift me up and carry me back to their nest (or lair or den or whatever you call mosquitoes' homes) where they could pick at me at their leisure.

That's not the worst part. The worst part is that I got there just after the best shots were available, despite sprinting lumbering at top speed from the parking area to the berm that overlooks the bay (or the mosquito-breeding marsh that borders it, anyway), and I didn't get any shots that justified donating two pints of blood to the local mosquito population.