'A few more weeks and you won't being seeing me outside anymore,' says the 73-year-old Dolfis as she stares forlornly at her ripening tomato garden. 'I don't care to be eaten alive, after all.'
Dolfis lives in Washington, one of the world's centres of power and lobbying, where decisions are made every day impact upon the world.
But Goliath has met its very own monster-slaying David: Aedes Albopictus, the Asian Tiger Mosquito.
The tiger mosquito has plagued gardens and terraces in the Washington area since 1985, scientists estimate, when it found its way to US shores via a tire shipment from Japan. It has spread to more than 20 US states since that fateful day.
Here in Washington, the blood-sucking, black-and-white-striped critters have developed into a regular epidemic in recent years, sending people running to the comfort of their living rooms rather than endure the horrors accompanying outdoor terraces.
Jean Dolfis counted up to 25 bites per gardening outing last year before trading in her garden stool for the living room TV lounger.
And Dolfis is not alone. Summer barbecues have become a rarity along Yuma Street in northwest Washington, where Dolfis lives. Anyone who does care to venture outside is either clad in long sleeves and trousers, sweltering in the heat and humidity that also plague Washingtonian summers, or rhythmically slapping and scratching ever so often, usually to no avail.
A carrier of diseases including dengue fever, the tiger mosquito is a nimble little beast.
'It's incredibly fast - you can hardly catch it,' Jorge Arias, head of mosquito control for Fairfax, Virginia, was quoted as saying by the Washington Post.
The tiger mosquito is a particularly stealthy creature, which creeps ups without the usual humming and buzzing of its less toxic colleagues, which also inhabit the region.
It bites both day and night, and loves high temperatures. It lays its eggs where one least expects - in the folds of plastic covers for outdoor grills, for example, or in flower pots, bottle caps, and abandoned automobile tires.
After three summers of increasing infestation, the plague has arrived somewhat earlier this year. Insect researchers have found that the larva are so mature that the first swarms can be expected by mid May, a half month earlier than usual.
Garden stores are brimming with sprays, creams, special candles and lamps that attract mosquitoes and roast them. Eating garlic or swallowing garlic pills can help ward them off.
But people like Jean Dolfis or Allison Hudgins insist that the little 'suckers' always come out on top in the end.
'A few minutes outside, and I have the first mosquito at my legs,' Hudgins told the Washington Post. Then the slapping game begins.
Ironically, the Hudgins family just moved from West Africa, thinking they had escaped the evening mosquito plague, only to find an even worse problem, one of near 'Biblical' proportions, in Washington.
After emptying one spray can after another, Hudgins and her family are moving to Panama, where she believes the plague can't be any worse than Washington, where the favourite restaurant for the tiger mosquito - the human buffet - is about to open once more for business.
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