I'm not sure why the comment is dead, but I also don't really understand the comment. Could you explain it please?
He's giving an anecdote. Mosquitos would land on a native man but not bite him. Some mosquitos bit him(timonoko) but he had DEET on so not many did. An Italian couple got very badly bitten and spent the trip trying to slap and genocide all of the mosquitos.
Ha. That's what I thought but the comment's dead status swayed my outlook and made me search for another meaning :O
I was trying to point out that Mosquito saliva produces somekind of deterrent and antigen. It takes only few bites and days to adapt with suitable genetic background. But Italians were offended and it turned into flame war.
I vouched your comment. I don't know why stuff needs to be downvoted to oblivion around here. HN voters, stop it and stop being so damn fickle.
I mostly agree, there is an omission of "edible" after "totally" that makes it read confusingly. However, I find the last sentence - "blood bath and genocide" - to be very out of place, to the point where invoking "genocide" to talk about some mosquitos getting swatted feels quite inappropriate.
Wouldn't the reverse reading make more sense, that the mosquitoes were creating a blood bath? And when did colorful metaphors become anathema?
it's metaphoric. Language can be used outside of its typical idiomatic expression.