My mosquito net is perhaps the thing I value most here after my air conditioning (you have no idea how much more bearable life is here with one, or maybe you do after the east coast/Midwest heat wave of last week). The netting serves the obvious purpose of keeping bugs out of my immediate sleeping area at night, or whenever I have it pulled down. This is excellent because despite my crazy bug stalking (see previous post on that for details) it's very rare that I get to the point where I think my room is actually bug free. For some reason no matter how much I spray or check every surface in my room there are always more bugs to kill. The mosquitos are particularly fond of hiding in my rack of hanging clothes for reasons I can't understand. Maybe the human smell on the clothes makes them think there's something worth checking out there? I can always kill a couple by shaking my hanging rack, but I never get all of them. So hence my love of my mosquito net, which creates a much smaller space for me to verify as bug free before I go to sleep, and the white color of the netting makes it easy to spot just about any bug on.
But my mosquito net also serves other very important purposes. Namely, it keeps everything else out. For instance, since I've decided I need as much help as I can get in my bug war I've enlisted the spiders that live in the spaces of the roof. Now, if I didn't have a net I would be too paranoid about them potentially dropping on me in my sleep (even though they seem very content to stay in their roof webs). But because of the net I let the spiders do their things with the bugs, hopefully reducing my own bug exposure, and I don't worry about them falling on me.
Ditto goes for the lizards, I like my lizard friends, but I think I would be slightly more terrified to sleep at night knowing one might fall on to me as I slept. Fortunately, my mosquito net also keeps me free of any other nightly visitors.
Finally, there are the unknown things that go bump in the night. Here, there are an unusual number of things that go bump in the night. Whether its the cats on the roof, or the toad I found inhabiting my trash can the other night (no idea how it got there), or the things I can't identify that move around my room at night, I sleep a lot better knowing that whatever is banging around my roof or room at night, I have a barrier between me and it/them.
Now, not all mosquito nets are created equally. You need to make sure it can either be tucked into your mattress, or that it meets the bedframe pretty solidly, and doesn't have any obvious holes, and is tied properly so it doesn't create hiding places for bugs. Fortunately my net meets all these requirements, and I sleep very soundly knowing that nothing is going to buzz in my ear or bite me while I sleep.
Don't ever underestimate the value of a good mosquito net.
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