There’s kicking someone when they’re down.

But these little horrors may be even worse — wanting to bite us when we’re just getting back on our feet.

It’s probably the last thing mud-caked Calgarians want to hear as they mop up from the worst flood ever, but ten days or so from now, this city may be dealing with one of the worst mosquito infestations in Calgary history.

Like so many other woes in southern Alberta right now, you can blame the water — that and temperatures absolutely ideal for the amorous blood-sucking pests.

“It’s two or three degrees below normal for highs right now, and that’s the perfect temperature for breeding mosquitos — perfect breeding weather and stagnant water,” said John Swann, manager of the invertebrate collections at the University of Calgary.

“Oh yeah, this is mosquito paradise right now — the mosquitos are going ‘woo hoo!’”

If you’re sick of water this week, Calgary’s skeeters are anything but.

Already feasting greedily before the Bow and Elbow rivers forced 75,000 Calgarians from their homes, mosquito bites have become as ubiquitous as mud stains for those working outside this week.

Even before the great flood, this was a spring tailor-made for mosquitos.

An accumulation of about 60 mm of rain in the weeks before the rivers broke, along with average temperatures of 18 C, had filled the air with clouds of tiny vampires — and those working outside were calling it torture.

“Eaten alive is probably not overreacting, it’s very bad,” David Abbott, owner of Chinook Landscaping, told the Sun just days before the flood.

Now it seems those will be remembered as the good old days.

As the rivers recede, tiny puddles of water remain, each an hatching ground for larva.

And though the water may have washed a few unborn pests away, Swann says the majority of summer mosquitoes are likely safe and ready to hatch as well — and that will be on top of the millions of new eggs being laid now.

“Any low lying water, if it stays as a temporary pond, that’s where you’re going to gave trouble because you have more breeding sites,” said Swann.

“It should be ten days to two weeks tops — and we should also have the summer mosquitoes starting any day now.”

If the city had time, it might be possible to treat the standing water with pesticides, hopefully killing off the squadrons of skeeters before they can fly — but the state of emergency and disaster recovery has pushed bugs to the backburner.

Even asking the city what it plans to do about the mosquitoes, if anything, was met with an inability to provide an answer.

Officials say they’re just too busy with the disaster to even find out if there’s a mosquito plan in the works.

Thus the water will likely just sit, and incubate.

It sounds like a buzzing, biting nightmare, and Swann says it just might be — he predicts a worst-case Calgary scenario would even top the horror Edmonton endured back in 2011.

That’s the year Edmonton’s Eskimos became the first CFL team in history to practice indoors, just to escape mosquitoes.

Yes, that bad.

Swann doesn’t want to scare Calgarians too badly, but the university bug expert grew up in Northern Ontario, where mosquito and blackfly are known to swarm in thick clouds, biting without mercy.

Swann says people living in this province may be more familiar with the flying pests of Manitoba — but in either case, he says what Calgary and area is facing over the next few weeks could rival the worst he’s ever seen back home.

“I would expect in two weeks, mosquitoes will be worse than right now,” Swann.

“I could see it getting Northern Ontario bad, or maybe say Winnipeg bad, because people out here will probably relate to that better.”

michael.platt@sunmedia.ca