Somebody once told me to “not sweat the small stuff.” I think they meant I should not worry about the little things in life, just worry about the big things.

Or something like that.

But lately I have been spending quite a lot of time worrying about some small things.

Mosquitoes to be exact.

I am not the only one. Anyone spending any time at all outdoors the last couple of weeks has been battling the little critters, too, I am sure.

The last couple of weeks I have been outside a lot, in my yard and garden. Mowing, weeding, planting, grilling. And, those mosquitoes have been bad. Thick as thieves and very blood-thirsty.

The city of Blue Earth had a company spray the town for mosquitoes and, to be honest, it barely put a dent in the population. So they sprayed a second time, and that helped some.

Some of us have sprayed our yards ourselves and that has helped. So has using bug spray on our bodies and clothes. But, the stuff only lasts so long and the skeeters are right back in attack mode.

As bad as they are in my yard, they are worse at the place where we camp. I know what you are thinking. What do I expect if I think having fun is going and spending the weekend in the woods. Well, you are right, it is kind of self inflicted.

After two years or so of having not many mosquitoes at our camp in the woods, due to dry conditions that also lowered the level of our little lake, this year’s wet weather seems to have helped hatch a massive horde of the little ankle biters.

We spray right around our camper, which helps of course, but it only lasts so long and we can’t spray the whole 15 acres of woods. Over the years we have used a variety of products, some more effective than others. The mosquitoes laugh at some of the little wrist bands that are supposed to keep them at bay. Citronella candles, some nice smelling bug spray and small anti-mosquito electronic items may work in some places, but not out in the woods.

They don’t call the good stuff Deep Woods Off for nothing. And even that is only going to last a little while.

We also had not seen wood ticks in a while at camp, but they, too, are back in a big way this year.

As bad as the mosquitoes are in my yard and my camp this year, it is nowhere near as bad as another place I have frequented in my earlier years.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area, or BWCA for short.

We made quite a few trips up there over the years, and we did that because we loved the place and the whole adventure of it.

But the mosquitoes, well, let me tell you. They are on a different level up there. For one thing, they are huge. For another, they are mean. And for a third reason, there can be a million of them in your camp. Especially at sun down. They can be heard humming in the woods, making their attack plans, as the sun gets lower in the sky.

We would be swatting them all day long, but come nightfall, the battle was going to get fierce.

I used to tell my fellow campers that I could hear them talking, saying it was time to attack. I swear they knew when my hands were full of camp gear, or I was carrying a canoe on my head and shoulders, and I was defenseless and unable to swat them.

The BWCA is a place where even Deep Woods Off would not work and we were forced to use a product that contained 100 percent DEET, in order to survive.

I also learned that mosquitoes like some people better than others. Some of the people on our trips didn’t seem to get bitten as much as others. I, for one, got bit a lot. I think it was because they really liked my blood. Maybe it was sweeter than the blood of my fellow campers.

I used to joke that after a particularly rough trip where I had fed a lot of mosquitoes that one of the first things I would have to do at home was go and get a blood transfusion due to my loss of blood on the trip.

Just to have some full disclosure, there was this one year when we went to the BWCA in late August and it had been a pretty dry year. We were shocked to find out that there were virtually no mosquitoes on that trip.

It was our best trip ever.

A friend of mine blames the fact that we have a problem with mosquitoes on Noah. Yeah, that Noah, from the Bible.

Noah should have never let those two mosquitoes get on the ark, he says. What was Noah thinking.

Well, I am headed to the camp again this weekend, where I will have to “lacquer up” – our term for spraying on bug spray – and enjoy some of the great outdoors.

I hope you do, too, and try not to let the skeeters bug you.