Wandering in the deep snowy woods of Vermont, I came upon a slender tree from which hung an even more slender tube, a cylinder hanging from a tender branch. It was black and orange, hanging by a metal “U” bracket, nestled against the trunk measuring about twice its girth, stark against the backdrop of snowy white. My curiosity got the better of me, so I waded over to the young birch, shorn of its leaves, to get a closer look. My partner wondered why I’d gone off-piste.
As I got closer I yelled back to her, “look, it says it’s a mosquito eradicator, a funny thing to see on a snowy day here in the woods.” She laughed. I trudged back and we began our walk back home to the wood stove’s warmth.
“Maybe,” she mused, “this is an important thing to have out in the woods. You know, what good do the mosquitos serve anyway? There are some houses around, at a distance, so someone must have hung a bunch of them hoping to keep the pesky buggers away. Or hunters tired of getting bitten, maybe.”
I snorted. My nose was running, but I retorted, “Right, they serve no purpose at all. Just bat food, I suppose. And that means we need them.”
“What do you mean,” she said. It was more of a statement than an inquiry. She knows my line of reasoning often borders on sophomoric humor versus having any sound basis in reality.
“Well, let’s see,” I intoned, “It’s good to have bats around, so they need to be fed. Eradicating mosquitos throws a wrench in bat reproductive rights. I mean, they have a right to be fed enough to be able to have offspring - right?” She looked at me askance, waiting for a clunky next shoe to drop.
I went on with a twinkle in my eye, “And it’s important to have bats so they can transmit viruses to the general populace of humans. Then, all the people who won’t wear masks will be eradicated in a self-induced population-control ritual that will span generations and keep us in balance with nature. It’s Darwinian. You know, survival of the fittest. Those of us who are best adapted to our environment will keep on going. If we’re smart enough to don masks, we’re more likely to live. If we don’t, we’ll die.”
Again, I got the sidelong glance that meant I was on thin ice in making my case for keeping mosquitos alive at the cost of humanity. Undeterred, I tried anew, “Can’t you see? We should breed mosquitos to fatten the bats, to spread more viruses, to kill more people not intelligent enough to wear masks, to leave behind a population that’s thinned out and able to live on the resources the earth can provide. If not for mosquitos, we’d suffer from overwhelming over-population worldwide and have to endure humanity’s colony collapse. We’d be like ants that grew too many in number and needed to be culled by a bacteria, or a flood. We’d scurry around looking for food to sustain ourselves and be confronted by other warring factions stealing from our carefully-constructed and well-concealed grainaries like the ancient Anasazi of the U.S. Southwest. We’d die of starvation or consuming illness. It would be pandemonium. It would be anarchy. It would be madness.”
She laughed a knowing laugh. We were thriving in the deep woods of Vermont. The chickens were laying eggs, slowly during the winter, but enough to sustain us. Venison hung in the shed, and half our wood and half our hay would surely last well past Candelmas Day. Clean water abounded in the kettle pond at the base of our land, and kerosene for our oil lamps was quietly biding its time in a fifty gallon drum by the woodshed. There was little we’d need other than to shovel a path for occasional trips to our root cellar stores for potatoes, beets, winter squash, or a bevy of colorful carrots, turnips, and pickled cabbage set up high on shelves out of reach of snuffling rodents.
The world could go to hell in a hand basket, implode or explode. We’d be here, making sacrificial offerings of our warm, fleshy arms and legs come springtime to keep the mosquitos humming.
Dave Celone writes from Sharon, Vermont.