I’m afraid of my garden.

A more accurate description, I guess, would be that I am afraid of the mosquitoes in my garden. All the rain that we’ve had over the last three months has provided me with a healthy, robust garden in full bloom here in the heat of mid-August, but has enabled tiny blood suckers to create thriving vampiric colonies beneath the wide, shady leaves of my caladiums. I can’t venture out there for even a moment without being set upon by throngs of the vile creatures — my legs and arms riddled with swelling welts.

Earlier this week, Dallas County Health and Human Services announced four new cases of West Nile Virus in four different city zips. You remember West Nile, right? Don’t confuse it with that twenty-four hour East Nile bug.

No, no.

That West Nile will mess you up.

Now, I’m not what you’d call an organic gardener, but I do try to be mindful of the chemicals I put into the world. As such, I don’t normally hit the garden with toxic agents. I’m all about the earthworms and the butterflies. I’ve got lots of birds out there, too. Don’t want to poison them, y’know?

I like birds.

Got no beef with them.

But the ’skeeters?

Them’s gotta die.

I’ve bombed the garden three times this summer.

And they keep coming back.

I’ve got the garden of the living dead out there!

You think holy water might work?