Okay, I get it. In Texas everything has to be bigger, and better, and more, and collosal, and...well, you get the point. Apparently that includes illness, and disasters, and all that. I mean, really, how dare another state in the Union have more cases of pneumonia than Texas!
The latest has been West Nile Virus. The way they go on about it, and spray for it, and plaster billboards with warnings about it; one would think the moment you step outside, mosquitoes eat you alive. (Something akin Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.) They talk about nothing else, they warn us they are spraying at such and such a time, and I kid you not that billboards and traffic signs have it flashing in red. It's got to be the worst epidemic of the decade.
Granted, I do not keep up with the news that much. But I have heard of a few of the cases where West Nile Virus was counted as the cause of death. Every one I heard was someone very old whose aged body was battling with much more than West Nile. And if someone did up the percentages of West Nile deaths compared to the population of the "Metroplex", I'm guessing it might reach 1%. Quite the epidemic...
For the record, I've had one mosquito bite this year. And that's about average for Texas. I don't see them, I don't hear them, and I don't feel them. It's nothing like New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, you do stay inside at dusk or light a million candles to keep them away - and that doesn't work all that well. So put on some long sleeves and spray yourself. You still get bit, of course. But no one runs around screaming, "Epidemic!" Good, old Yankee stock, I guess.
But we won't tell the Texans that. I mean, they've got to have something to brag about...and this will do until flu season comes around...or maybe there will be a chicken pox rampage first. You never know.
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