Bzzz...SMACK!

At a recent Canada Day BBQ with some friends, we played a competitive game involving whacking a whiffle ball at various targets with golf clubs. The team that scored the least strokes overall wins. We had so much fun that we kind of lost track of the strokes each team hit, but we did track the number of times we each got bitten by mosquitoes.


Despite putting on bug spray, we still got bitten and AfterBite can only help so much. I'm also using Benadryl anti-itch cream to relieve the itching. As of right now, D sports three bites on top of his head and a few on his arms. I'm one of those people who react strongly to insect bites, so the bite on my back has welted, as well as the one on my arm. But the bites on the joints are the worse because they swell so much that movement is affected. Every now and then, my ankle hardens and I find it so painful to walk that I have to pause for a moment to "shake" off the numbness before I can hobble around again. (I have been bitten on the knee once and had to be carried in and out of the car because I couldn't bend my knee.) I have already taken antihistamines to ease the swelling; two days later the back of my ankle is still swollen. I discovered that I was bitten twice on the ankle, about 1cm. apart from each other.

Of all the wonderful creatures God has created, why has He created mosquitoes? Beside spreading disease and causing all sorts of problems like malaria, yellow fever, and the West Nile virus, what good are mosquitoes anyway? In my "research," I have found a few good things:

1. They pollinate flowers, which help the environment; at least, the non-pregnant and male mosquitoes do. No offense to my pregnant friends, but it's the pregnant female mosquitoes that are the blood-suckers!

2. They are food for other animals, like bats, fish, birds, which contribute to a natural food chain.

3. They make for good stories. Each of us have battle scars to prove our fight with mosquitoes (some of my mosquito-inflicted wounds last up to a year) and when we begin to tell how we got bitten in the first place, our stories lead to other good stories about picnics, camp, BBQs, drive-in movies, swimming, and on and on. In fact, there is a West African folk tale about why mosquitoes buzz in people's ears and throughout this short story are the underlying cultural beliefs of how animals and their environment affect each other.

See? Mosquitoes are good for something after all.

PS - My sister, who was bitten over thirty times during our cross-Canada trip, loves dragonflies because we found out that they eat mosquitoes. Whenever you see a dragonfly, you can be sure there won't be mosquitoes around.