Sleeping with the Enemy: The War against Mosquitos

Last night I slept with an intruder in my room. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was definitely here. She watched me, stalked me, and attacked me while I slept. Then she crept out of my room before I even had a chance to defend myself. But like any other criminal working off natural instincts, she did leave behind some evidence. And now as I try not to scratch my plethora of mosquito bites, I’m declaring war on her and all her kind.  

You may be wondering how I know my enemy is a woman. Couldn’t a male mosquito be the culprit behind my itchiness? No. Unlike human men, male mosquitos are harmless. They don’t even buzz when they fly. Females are the ones you have to watch out for. They buzz, they bite, they feed. Worse yet, female mosquitos do not attack out of hunger. They attack to preserve their species. Talk about a deadly war adversary.

You see, female mosquitos seek out blood when they’re pregnant so they can nourish their offspring. Basically, your blood is like a bottle of prenatal vitamins. Through a complicated process, a mosquito gathers all she needs for her eggs by filtering your blood down to its most concentrated form. She doesn’t want the water that dilutes your blood. She just wants the real thing. In the spirit of making a complicated process sound simple, she pees out whatever she doesn’t need so she can keep drinking what she does need. That’s right. Not only do mosquitos piss you off. They also leave you pissed on.  

Something about that makes me feel doubly violated. As if it’s not enough that I’m stuck with these itchy bumps, I’m also covered in mosquito pee. To be fair, it’s not a lot of pee and the little bit that exists came from me in the first place. But I don’t want to be fair. I want to stop feeling itchy and to stop thinking about urine. It’s a little late for that now, though. The damage has already been done and that mosquito is probably off giving birth to a colony of new blood suckers. They’ll grow up, get pregnant, nourish their eggs, and pee on even more people. It will continue on in a gross circle that will continue to irritate every unwilling blood donor for the rest of time.

I’ve already declared war on mosquitos, but I can’t commit insecticide alone. We probably can’t do it as a group, either. But we can at least avenge ourselves against a few of these winged vampires and eliminate some of their future generations.

So in the name of everybody who’s ever been bothered by a mosquito bite, I implore you to join my crusade. Invest in a fly swatter. Buy some bug spray. Keep your yard water-free. And when you hear a mosquito buzzing around your head, jump to action. Kill that mosquito. Kill it a lot. Let no mosquito go unpunished. Your blood is not a public water fountain. It’s your blood. Keep it safe, keep it on the inside, and keep up the good fight against unnerving itchiness.