Poison Ivy

This isn't the same house referenced below, but the brush was just as bad as or worse than this.
Actually, this house is near Antioch, not terribly far from where the incident below occurred.

For several days now I’ve been in denial about the fact that I have poison ivy.

Does one actually have poison ivy or is it more appropriate to say that one has contracted  a rash due to poison ivy or is one simply allergic to poison ivy and is this as painful to read as it is to scratch write?

The fact of the matter is, up until now I could wallow in poison ivy and never feel any effects.  Chesapeake Bay Son?  If he so much as looks at it, or someone utters the words poison or ivy he’s broken out for weeks, in agony. It’s terrible.

(Around here we pronounce that last word TERR-rhymes with her-uh-bull.)

But I grew up here in the country, spent years, days and hours on end wandering around in all manner of weeds, tall grass and woods and never once was sensitive to it.

Well, OK, maybe once. 

Here recently after messing around with some clippers in an area that I know is rife with poison ivy, one small bump appeared on my ankle. I pointed, ridiculed and laughed at it, and away it went.  The End.

But last week something happened.  Something I was hoping to avoid telling.  Something I wasn’t exactly going to share with anyone, much less the internetz since it may or may not have involved me setting foot on property that is not public. Just for a minute.

I was jogging down my favorite jogging road, which for purposes of this story shall remain nameless even though I’ve named it millions of times before. 

Anyway, I got to thinking about this magnolia tree which stands in the middle of the woods close to the road.  I thought how oddly situated it is amid so many pine trees and then got to thinking how usually magnolia trees are planted purposefully in people’s yards (unlike pine trees which grow in my some people's gutters).

Perhaps this tree was marking the site of an old house.

So I slowed down from a jog to a walk and peered into the woods near the magnolia.  (Anything to take a break.)

Lo and behold, I saw an old house sitting way back off the road, hiding in a very dense thicket.

Knowing no cars would be along ever for some time, I hopped across the Grand Canyon cavernous ditch and scampered back into the woods. There was lots of waist-high brush everywhere (and I was wearing shorts) but I didn’t pay it any mind. I was dead set on two things: escaping the ferocious winged monkeys known as Mathews Mosquitoes that had suddenly descended out of nowhere now that I was in the woods; and getting a closer look at that house.

Well, the mosquitoes were so bad I couldn’t open my mouth without ten flying inside focus on the house, although the little bit I saw looked charming. After trudging several hundred miles yards through dense jungle brush, swatting at winged monkeys mosquitoes the whole time, I turned around and headed back to the safety of the road, already scratching at the damage done by those mutant insects.

By the way, today, when I asked how things were down Bavon, my high school classmate Johnny Pugh replied that the mosquitoes down that end of the county were "taking off and landin' like jet planes." Bavon is Mosquito Hell Heaven, but I think these woods I was in could give even Bavon a run for its money. Regardless what part of the county we’re talking about, we grow insects big—monstrously big-- here in Mathews.

Finally I made my way back to the main road and resumed my run, swatting at real or perceived mosquitoes or anything that made a buzzing sound inside around my head. I drove home and thought nothing more of the incident.

Several days later, I started itching.  Bad.  And then the rash appeared. 

I either have poison ivy or the beginnings of malaria, or possibly West Nile Virus.  Either/or, take your pick.

Rest assured it will be a cold day in hell Mosquito Heaven before I venture into those woods again.

The End.

This isn't poison ivy. But just pretend that it is. Also pretend there are mosquitoes the size of bald eagles descending so thick you can't even see this window. Then wonder if the rash you have is caused by poison ivy, which you've never had, or malaria, which you probably do have based on exposure to unusually large, unusually dense, mutant mosquitoes.