Once bitten, twice shy: how to beat the bugs

ALL humans are attractive. Some are more attractive than others. Or so it appears to mosquitoes. As bugs go, they’re among the most dreaded, and recent reports of a British woman paralysed from the neck down for four months after being bitten, did nothing to assuage those fears.

In her case, the bite activated an underlying condition and it was that which resulted in the horrific reaction. The story became a convenient excuse for those too broke to travel abroad on holidays. “We’re safer at home,” was the vibe.

Of course you don’t have to go abroad to get bitten by the flying syringes. We have plenty of our own. “Mosquitoes are well-established in Ireland and have been for years,” according to Dr Martyn Linnie, curator of the zoological museum at Trinity College Dublin.