by Chris Morvan
I don’t know where the mosquito stands on the conservationists’ list of protected species, but I would hope it’s very near the bottom. Do they do any good to anybody or anything? Seriously, if they don’t, why hasn’t mankind already wiped them out? They spread deadly diseases. And when they’re not doing that, they’re getting some practice in, biting us because they’ve got nothing better to do.
Actually, as a conservation extremist might point out, that is trivializing the issue, because the female mosquitoes, who do the biting, need protein such as exists in human blood to help their own reproduction process.
If only communication were possible with these insects, surely a deal could be struck whereby we provided bowls of blood or something containing the necessary substances, like mosquito soup kitchens, on the condition that they stop the hostilities.
The mosquitoes of St. Maarten are a distinctive bunch. They seem to be darker and sturdier than most I have encountered and they also have the speed and evasive skills of Baron von Richthofen. It is, then, a rare treat to splat one of these little muggers on a wall.
In the Caribbean mosquitoes are a fact of life, but back on my similarly sized island in the English Channel they are a novelty. You get the odd one on a hot night in late summer and it’s almost like a little adventure, prowling the bedroom with a rolled-up newspaper in search of the one theatrically buzzing miniature demon that is keeping you awake.
Once, in Italy, on the outskirts of the beautiful city of Florence, I was bitten by a mosquito in the most private of male areas and the injury escalated to the stage where I was compelled to sterlilise a needle in a flame and lance the swelling to release the pus. So is it surprising that I would support a global programme of eradication?
While waiting for that, however, I did some research with a view to making myself a less attractive target. And there is a list of factors that increase your vulnerability.
They can detect carbon monoxide, such as is exhaled in our breath – and they can do this hundreds of feet away.
They like dark colours, type O blood, perspiration and perfume.
And they are particularly attracted to beer drinkers.
And so it was that, in the interests of science and with a heroic gallantry bordering on the insane, I sat sweating one evening on a balcony overlooking Simpson Bay lagoon, wearing dark blue shorts and a black t-shirt, with a warm bottle of Corona sending its vapours into the air to contend with the cologne of which I reeked.
The shorts had been a bone of contention at the planning meeting: obviously they expose more flesh than a pair of jeans would, but that was the whole idea: to lure a maternal flying pest onto an expanse of skin where I could see her and would have the option of smacking her with either hand.
The stakeout began, the boredom relieved only by the beer and a little music in the background, because I had to stay alert and focused, so reading a John Grisham wasn’t an option.
The mosquitoes were there, silent and unseen, but at first it seems it was only the infamous low-flying Ankle Biters Squadron, who attacked and ran, mocking my attempt to trap them.
Then they started on my elbows and I began to wonder if my research had been sufficiently detailed. I knew these females were looking for capillaries close to the surface and I had even looked up capillaries in the dictionary on my phone. But were there more of these around the joints? If I survived this night I would have to investigate more thoroughly.
I slapped pathetically at my arms, knowing it was too late and also wary of frightening off my assailants completely.
I wiped some sweat from my brow and rubbed it onto my thigh in a three-inch circle. In the center I dabbed a little from an area where I had sprayed the cologne.
A mosquito bit my ear in a manner I considered unnecessarily disrespectful.
And then it happened. The finest, bravest, darkest and most muscular of the mossie girls landed on my thigh, right on the target area. And she didn’t just hit and run, she sat there like a cool gunslinger, waiting for me to draw.
I found myself holding my breath like a marksman as I slowly unfolded my arm and then with a sharpness I hadn’t experienced since my teenage cricket-playing days I let her have it with my favoured right hand.
You can’t see immediately if you’ve been successful, so I slowly removed my hand and turned it up, my left one ready to clap her to death if she was lying there, injured but moving.
Victory! The perpetrator lay in a smudge of what was probably my own blood.
A pointless exercise? There may not be enough decimal places in the whole of mathematics to calculate the tiny percentage of the mosquito population I had creamed.
But mark one up for the human race. We’re not taking this lying down.
