Killing mosquitoes on a scale that makes a difference is no small undertaking. It requires knowledge of the mosquito life cycle. And it requires something else entirely—a sense that what you’re doing is for the greater good. A feeling that every time you lay down a thick fog of permethrin that it’s the right thing to do. That all that death you’re rolling into that field is a good thing.

I relished a well-placed fog. A perfect fog would move across a pasture like it was alive. It rolled and reached. It crawled along. A hungry crab. An arthropod eating other arthropods, riding the soft currents of the morning breeze.

I once fogged a stretch of sage and irrigated pastureland that separated the tiny town of Independence from the Owens River. Respirator on and full of Vivarin caffeine pills it was two-thirty in the morning when I arrived on site. The wind was down and the conditions to unleash the fog were just right. I got out of the cab and started the motor on the fogger.

A light bar faced forward as well as backward toward the fogger. On moonless nights, out in the middle of nowhere, these lights imparted a modicum of safety. Within the light, I felt safe. Outside the light, danger lurked, and it was from that darkness that a teenager, drunk as you can be and still stand wobbled from the brush.

“Can I have a ride,” he said.

“This is not a good place to be,” I said, my voice muffled trough the rubber respirator.

“What?”

“This is a dangerous place to be,” I said. The kid walked so near to the fogger nozzle that his hair blew around as if in a gale. I shut the motor off.

“What?” he said, and stepped closer still.

I pulled the respirator up and propped it on my forehead. “This is a bad place to be, kid. I’m about to fog for mosquitoes. You shouldn’t be breathing this stuff.”

“Can you give me a ride to town.”

“No, I can’t give you a lift. You shouldn’t be here.” He turned on his heel, wobbled, and walked back off into the sage. I started the motor, pulled the mask back into place, and got into the cab. Gun’s and Roses played on the radio, and I went about my killing.