Thursday, February 18, 2010

A Mosquito Fog

Yesterday, I was pretty sure that a forest fire had broken out behind my house. All I could see when I looked out my back window was a thick, smoky fog.

Rather than grab water or call the fire department, my first thought was "Oh crap! I need my camera. This'll be awesome!"

Yeah. I'm that kind of person. I blame J-school.

Record the moment first; seek help later.

So anyway, I went to grab my camera, fixed the settings and ran back to the window to open her up and shoot away.

And there was nothing. No smoke. No flames. No excitement.

It turns out that it was just the pest control people fogging for mosquitoes.

Wah. Wah.

Stupid skeeters killed my excitement for the day.

In Singapore, the climate is so wet that mosquitoes are a big problem. In our area, they must fog quite frequently to make being outside even remotely comfortable. They also do it to inhibit the breeding of the Aedes mosquito, which carries Dengue fever. I talked about it a long time ago here.

To make up for my lost photo op, I did semi-stalk the pest control dude from my window hoping that he'd at least fog something again.

Instead, he dropped his stuff and took a walk.

I thought the fogger looked a lot like a futuristic leaf blower. (Ignore the stupid light post that was in the way.)

So...I'm sorry I couldn't get you guys a forest fire. I know that would've been way more fun.

1 comment:

Brad Farless said...

That's funny! I'm the same way. When I see something ... unfortunate... going on, the first thing I want to do is take photos. I saw two cars almost collide a few days ago and I was actually disappointed that they didn't because I had my camera with me at the time. Weird right?

In the HDB we lived in at Tampines they fogged about once a month for roaches and I suppose mosquitoes too. I'd hate to be in Singapore if they didn't.

When I'm in the Philippines visiting my wife's family we have to have a few of those bug repellent things plugged into power outlets to keep mosquitoes away but I have a feeling it's not too healthy for people either. I need to get screens installed in the guest bedroom there. -_-