The Great Texas Mosquito Festival In Clute

This morning I mentioned that I had suffered my first mosquito bite since being exiled in Texas.

Miss GG then commented regarding me getting bit, saying, "I know you don't like to hear this, but it's just more proof you're a Texan. Also, you said 'skeeter' the other day. Maybe that's WA speak, but I doubt it."

Actually skeeter is WA speak for mosquito. It must be a universal nickname.

Mosquito seems to be the theme of the day, today.

This morning I got an invite to The Great Texas Mosquito Festival. This festival takes place in the Brazosport Area, in the town of Clute, down in the Texas Gulf Coast Region.

The Great Texas Mosquito Festival has taken place annually for 3 decades on the last Thursday, Friday and Saturday of July. Which makes this year's Great Texas Mosquito Festival happening on July 28, 29 and 30 at Clute's Municipal Park.

The Great Texas Mosquito Festival has a carnival, games, contests, races, tours and Live Entertainment Nightly on stage. For the athletically inclined, there is a “Mosquito Chase” 5K Run and 600 meter Kids run on Saturday. Also on Saturday there are tournaments featuring double horseshoe pitching and double washer pitching. If you can cook then you must enter the BBQ Cookoff and Grill Master Competition. For the more mature (60+) there is BINGO and for the little ones, there are haystack dives, Skeeter Beaters Baby Crawling, O’You Beautiful Doll, Petting Zoo, Kid’s Fishing, Monster Water Balls, Carnival, and more. There are food and arts and craft vendors. Then for some extra fun enter the Mosquito Calling or Mosquito Legs Contest.

The Great Texas Mosquito Festival website has an informative press release with an imaginative tale of how a mosquito named Willie Man-Chew began The Great Texas Mosquito Festival.

From his vantage point high atop a moss-hung oak, Willie Man-Chew rested from his long search for a perfect home and surveyed the scene below. Here, in the early summer of 1981, the sight and sounds that greeted him were a delight to his senses. There were healthy, tanned humans playing ball, swimming in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, enjoying state of-the-art playground equipment, laughing and having fun. Willie’s discerning eye noted the lush greenery surrounding the homes and schools in the neighborhood. Springing, as he does from the finest bloodlines in southern Brazoria County, he realized that he had, at last, found the land of his dreams.

Willie quickly marshaled a group of humans as his official goodwill ambassadors and began preparations for the first of the annual festivals that honor him and his fellow mosquitoes the last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of July each year. These ambassadors, whom Willie affectionately and jokingly calls his “Swat Team” present three fun filled days of special events, games, food, carnival rides, and contests, craft booths, cookoffs and much, much more.  Ya’ll come down to Clute, Texas and join us just for the fun of it!

I guess The Great Texas Mosquito Festival sort of sounds fun. I don't know if it sounds fun enough to drive all the way to a location 55 mile southeast of Houston.