(no subject)

The first time I picked tomatoes this summer, I got bitten many times, almost exclusively on the left side, partly because my right arm was in motion picking. Slabbed on the afterbite to unsatisfactory success. Yesterday evening at about the same time, I picked from the same plants and got maybe two little bites max. Have the gluttons migrated or failed to reproduce? They do seem to cluster briefly in areas you don't expect: weeks ago, I got about five bites just reading on the living room sofa. Maybe I've given them too little credit for unpredictability.

What interests me more is that my mom and sister suffer from bites far more than I and my dad do every year. For my sister, we like to blame a poem I wrote at age 11 in which I express brotherly affection by attributing weird anatomy and behavior to her, including "your blood is red punch." Did she happen to inherit it from our mom? They don't have the same blood type at all (A+ and O-), and mine is closer (O+).

Now, I would have expected to hear about it if this is true, but maybe it's a female thing. Only female mosquitos suck human blood. Could it be something in the pheromones?