DAVID GREENE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm David Greene. Seemed like a pretty bad day for Irina Ilyukhina. The 9-year-old girl from the Russian town of Berezniki was picking berries and got devoured by mosquitoes - 43 bites. Her legs were covered. Awful - or not. This is actually cool if you live in Berezniki. The town hosts a mosquito festival, and Irina won a ceramic cup for being most bitten. Now, there were far fewer mosquitoes than usual because of the heat. Funny, they wanted to avoid this event, and the humans didn't. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.