ants

I'm sitting here blogging about the Real Hawaii, how it ain't all paradise, but I struggle to be convincing. It's lovely here. It really is a dream place to live. (And then the qualifications come pouring in: dream place once you figure out how to afford the electricity, gas, and grocery prices; find somewhere that you can pay for to live; find a way to make an honest living that doesn't eat up all the time you'd hope to spend on the beach or in the water....)

And as I'm telling about the climate, the variety, I feel a tickle on my shoulder. It's a little tickle. If Eskimos have a gazillion words for snow, Hawaiians should have that many for the feeling of various bug tickles.

There's the Phantom Tickle (the worst of all). It moves around, sometimes bites, and has no resolution of a known etiology. Onset and relief are indeterminate.

There's the Ant Tickle. Take a pencil and move one of your arm hairs back and forth. That's an ant tickle. If you're not holding a pencil and moving your hairs, there's an ant on you.

There's the Centipede Tickle. If corn cobs had fingers to drum on you lightly, that's what it would feel like to be climbed by a centipede. This tickle is sometimes followed by a screaming pain in the vicinity of the previous 10,000 finger massage.

There's the Scorpion Tickle. I don't know... never had it, but they're bound to crawl on you, right?

There's the Kona Kruiser Tickle. Cockroaches the size of trophy Medjool Dates move very quickly, so the tickle is more like a panicked rush across your body. Although harmless, the karmic wave of anxiety from both the bug and yourself leaves a trail of electric residual tickle like no other. The world suddenly seems hurried.

There's the Ant Tickle. This one is so common that it should really be listed between each of the others, as a representation of frequency of occurrence.

There's the Fly or Mosquito Tickle. This are so rare in Hawaii that it has led many to tout Hawaii as bug free. It's a lie. There are bugs, but just fewer nagging flocks of flies and mosquitoes than what you'd get on a mainland summer day. The mosquitoes are clumsy enough here that they rarely can sneak up on you like on the mainland. You feel them bumping into you like you're a sliding glass door and they're looking for a way out.

There's the Gekko Tickle. While technically not a bug and not a tickle, this sensation is weird enough to merit an attempt at description. Take a cold hotdog and slap it on your arm. That's the gekko landing on you. Then take the Kona Kruiser Tickle and add rubber boots for the rest of the effect. What a rush! No matter how much you love the lizards, it'll get a howl out of you when they land and run off of you.

For a taste of the complete relaxation that a night or two of paradise can give you, simply mix only one or two of the above tickles with a relentless humid heat. Five minutes is sufficient to feed the Phantom Tickle generator and to wake the next morning with that "I've just slept in hell" look.