July 6, 2005
Bug From Hell

Ah July.  Home to baseball, apple pie and the mosquito population’s annual blood drive.   Criticize winter to your heart’s content; vicious insects aren’t a problem when Robert Frost’s woods are deep with snow.  

Not to find fault with Biblical mainstays but Noah really missed a golden opportunity to save countless generations the agony of itching, scratching and wasting money on 2-4-D had he simply removed a sandal, swung his shoe from the heel and sent one of the two mosquitoes on board into the hereafter with a most satisfying splat.  I’m more than willing to forgive the Ark captain for allowing other vicious critters to survive.  With snakes a “live and let live” philosophy has long been the best policy, there’s seemingly no way to send horse flies to their great reward without first experiencing a paralyze your arm from the shoulder down bite and with no-see-ums, the name alone adequately illustrates the problem at hand when it comes to eradication of the breed. 

But those damn mosquitoes!  Not to be overly sensitive, but my designated role in life seems to be in serving as a universal donor when it comes the mosquito “staff of life”.   There are friends who meander through an entire summer gardening, fishing, golfing and mowing without the slightest worry about incurring the welt-raising wrath of these needle-nosed sneaks.  Not so with this kid.  Four or five years ago, back when Denver was still home to a major league baseball team, I attended a Rockies July 4th fireworks game.  Our seats were 15 rows up behind home plate.  For a mosquito to satisfy his vampirish thirst on my arm, it first had to pass over 50,000 other souls also gathered in Coors Field to witness the rockets red glare.  But with bombs bursting in air, a voracious little monster buzzed through the smoke, noise and assembled multitudes to select my forearm as the “blue plate special” of the evening.  

Most every creature in God’s Kingdom has one or two redeeming features.  Think long and hard and one eventually can conjure up good things to say about cats, city planners and Michael Jackson.  But mosquitoes?  What do they do for humanity beside be the “Typhoid Mary” for malaria, West Nile virus and bubonic plague.  Well, maybe fleas were responsible for the plague but you get the point. 

With mosquitoes, bite prevention is almost as bad as the welt itself.  In today’s society we can put a man on the moon or put a lemon scent in furniture polish but modern science is incapable of formulating a mosquito repellent that doesn’t have an odor consistent with a recent kerosene spill?  Don’t e-mail me about the “bug-off” wonders of sweet smelling “Skin So Soft”.  I bought that argument once and within an hour appeared to be suffering from chicken pox.  I’m convinced the word of mouth campaign hailing the protective wonders of “Skin So Soft” was started by a mosquito owned P R firm.  

Every section of our country brags about the killer mosquitoes in their neck of the woods or swamp.  Minnesotans become absolutely effusive claiming mosquitoes in the land of 10,00 lakes (and one fish) are so big they’re hunted with a four ten shotgun. Folks in the Deep South claim Dixie mosquitoes are more fearsome than water moccasins, copperheads or rattlers. Growing up along the Mississippi in the Mid-West, our mosquitoes weren’t particularly large but so viciously sneaky mean Charles Manson was warm and cuddly by comparison.  Around here my friend Chuck, a high country regular, claims the Grand Mesa mosquitoes are so big they have numbers painted on the underside of their wings.