The Zapper

For those of you who haven't given up on me, I have another post. When we first arrived in Taiwan, it seemed pretty hot and we opened our windows. For a few weeks we didn't learn how to operate the built-in screens and we seemed to have no problems with bugs, flies, or mosquitoes. For about five months we were going along fine, and then in March we started being bothered by mosquitoes while we were sleeping, buzzing in our ears and keeping us awake. Alma got bit a lot, but I didn't seem to. We mentioned this to some company one night and a woman said she would help us get a zapper. She immediately left and went to a nearby grocery store where she bought a heating device that puts fumes into the air and kills the mosquitoes.

This is the device with some used cardboard wafers which contained the poison. Annmarie was not anxious to come visit if we had mosquitoes. We got this about a week before she arrived and it seemed to work. However, we didn't like the smell of it.

Then about a week after she left, a fellow senior missionary was buying an electric zapper at Costco and I said, "I want one of those," so he went and got one and I bought it.

This seems to work good, although they can survive if they are in a different room. The interesting thing about this is the noise it makes when they get zapped. I was told that you would hear it when they got zapped, but I was skeptical. But it IS really loud. The nearest thing I can compare it to is the toy cap pistol -- it can make you jump if you are near by. It has a little tray at the bottom where you can see the remains of their demise.