ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

A local city worker was kept up overnight by a lone mosquito in his bedroom, forcing him to turn his bedside lamp into a crude searchlight.

Betoota Heights mortgagee Riley O’Leary told our reporter that it still took some time for him to find the mosquito – and when it did, it was on the ceiling.

“I couldn’t reach it with my hands,” he said.

The 35-year-old person who does something in town with a computer that makes other people money said he had to think on his feet, despite still being in bed.

“I lay there in bed scanning the room for the mozzie like it was a German bomber in the night sky over London,”

“Except there was way, way less pressure on me. Hats off to those blokes. Anyway, when I found him, he was on the ceiling and out of my reach. I was going to have to get out of bed,”

Riley said he fashioned a ‘kangaroo tail’ out of his bath towel, which carried some extra weight on the count of being still half-wet and six weeks without a wash.

His first lash with the towel missed the insect but the impressive velocity in which the tail cracked put a large dint in the gyprock.

“At that point, I said ‘Fuck me,’ to myself softly and tried to relocate it. Got the lamp back out and scanned the room. Nothing,”

“I was going to have to change my plan. The British style almost worked but this called for a more sneaky approach.”

Riley said he got back in bed and waiting for the mosquito to come to him.

Slowly, the unmistakable whine of death that denotes the presence of a lone mosquito in a darkened bedroom started to grow louder.

When he thought it was right next to his ear, he slapped the side of his head with a third of his might.

The ringing in his ears wasn’t loud enough to drown out the death whine of the mosquito fleeing into the darkness. He’d have to try again.

However, he resigned to getting the doona out of the cupboard and turning the fan on like the first world pig he is.



More to come.

