Mosquitos beware

Long time no post. I have no real excuse other than lack of inspiration, until this week.

Not the best picture, I know. If you look closely, you will see a white truck with a sort of "sprayer" on the back, blowing out a smokey substance that hangs in the air for some time after it passes. This is the public health department's "Contra Dengue" movement. Several times a year, they send people to your house to walk through, put insecticide of some kind in your drains, and check all the places in your house where you might have standing water where mosquitos could lay eggs. Apparently they also send a truck around to blow mosquito killing fumes into the trees in residential areas. What the truck is spraying, I have no idea. Years of working for MSU Entomology made me terribley paranoid of things being sprayed out of the back of trucks to kill insects. Yet there were people walking around on the street as this truck went by, and they seemed unfazed.

The smoke hangs in the air a bit and I imagine settles on the leaves and the ground, doing it's job. How much of it is in my lungs?

Borracharia

Need tires? Just look for the sign made of a tire, or a large stack of them at the side of the road. Looking for new tires? Probably won't find them here. At least, it doesn't seem like many non-fully automated with lifts and what not stores sell new ones. If it doesn't look like a typical USA style tire store, you will probably have to go for the new used tire, which is much cheaper and more common. These hole in the wall stores are much more common than the fully automated ones. They can patch your tires, replace them, buy your used ones, you name it. Looks like this one does bike tires as well. Shame the bus got in the way of the cool sign made of a tire. Oh well.

(singing) The itsy bitsy anty....

No, it's not dirt. What you are looking at are the tinyest ants I have ever seen. They are by far the most irritating insect that infests homes here in Brasil (beating mosquitos only because at least there is a repelant for those). They work just as fast as the super speed ants upstairs, but they are always around, and are on everything, even me. Ever feel that tickle that might be a loose hair touching your arm? Nope, it's an ant. And that itchy feeling on your neck? Also an ant. Tickel in your nose or ear? Probably an ant. I can't figure out how to get rid of them - the smaller they are, the more ellusive they are. I wouldn't mind them so much if the didn't also populate the trash cans as well as investigave my table and Ju's high chair tray (which is where they are in this picture). They have sort of artistically surrounded some spilled juice here, but that doesn't really add anything credible to their CV in my book.