Boy, that got your attention, didn’t it? The San Jose Mercury News just validated the cost of the year’s subscription to me. I happened to thumb through their gardening section–like that’s going to do me any good, right? A lupus patient with a flare at the moment so that my eyes are currently going into whiteout conditions, unable to see well enough to read for the rest of the day if I go out in direct sunlight even for a moment. (I’ve been going to the passenger side of the car lately in dark glasses with my eyes shut tight and someone guiding me.) I’m not going out in the sunlight. I’m not growing tomatoes this year. I don’t want to go blind–I was for a few weeks on the left two years ago, and I refuse to go back if I can help it.
But there was a mention of www.bugband.net in an article describing how the reporter had tested it out. A bracelet with geranium vapors to keep mosquitos away. It was cheap, and it had worked.
I not long ago opened my front door to watch a beautiful little goldfinch die right there in front of me on the edge of my welcome mat. The county refused to test it: there was no point. They had thousands of dead birds reported and West Nile was already known to be here in greater force than I believe any other county in California.
I have almost no immune system. I’ve been on chemo for four years. I have been unable to take walks in the evenings, the simplest escape from cabin fever, for fear of a simple mosquito bite and all the potential risk in it with all that I have going on.
A simple bracelet. Totally non toxic. Designed so you can string them into a collar on your dog if you want. Or an anklet to go with your bracelet if you’re really paranoid. Designed to snap open rather than cause damage to the wearer if snagged.
I can’t tell you how much of a hurry I am in for that package of bracelets to arrive. Let freedom ring me!