ON Friday they prayed; I guess they prayed extra hard because their prayers were answered with a resounding yes — witness the floods of water that came gushing down the streets and roads, up from the gutters and into our homes. One thing, however, that I’m sure none of those praying had bargained for, except for the usual Jeddah-turned-Venice scenario, is this other pesky little problem. The floods may be a balm to water-starved land but no ointment has yet been concocted that can soothe the itch of a mosquito bite.
They have been around for millions of years, perhaps even long enough to have annoyed T-Rex in the Jurassic Age. Over the years they have honed their skills so that they are now experts at finding people to bite, whether through the carbon dioxide we emit or through their sensors which hone in on the heat from warm-blooded mammals. Indeed, never has a peskier occupant shared space with a human being — bar those college roommates who liked to play their heavy metal "music" well into the night. These blood-sucking mini-vampires have no apparent redeeming feature and I imagine that even Disney would be hard pressed to "cutify" them a la BUGS.
Out of the various little ponds and bigger lakes that dot the city after each downpour, they come. They hatch out, dry their wings under the steady rays of the sun and fly off in search of prey. While the municipality is busy draining streets flooded with enough water to sail Noah’s Ark all the way to China, the mosquitoes creep up unawares. Through badly fitted windows and gaps in torn screens, through the front door as you step in or out, they find their way into your nest and lie low until night falls when they attack. They buzz maddeningly around your head, too minute to be caught by the fly swatter clutched in your ready hand.
It seems that the problem continues to grow and nothing is done about it. Years ago planes used to fly over and spray the city, in addition to the trucks that came around leaving a cloud of chemicals in their wake. Perhaps when the mosquitoes bite enough, ahem, "VIPs," then at last something will be done about this pest. Until then the only solution apparently is to be armed with enough knowledge to go after the mosquitoes ourselves. The Internet has a wealth of facts that you want and didn’t really want to know about these insects, from encyclopedic accounts of the life of a mosquito to stomach-turning, X-rated clips of their mating habits.
Interestingly it turns out that only about 50 percent of the mosquito population are the irritating kind. Basically because only the female bites. The male is just a harmless drone, to be loved and left to sip his nectar and die a few days after he’s done his job of fertilizing the eggs. The female then lays her eggs but there is a hitch. Once the female has had a meal of good old blood — perhaps yours — she lays her eggs on any body of standing water. The eggs hatch and the cycle begins again.
How can we get rid of them? A multitude of products on supermarket shelves promise to be lethal enough to kill mosquitoes, and indeed other flying insects, without harming your health. The effectiveness of these formulae is somewhat in doubt. An insect that has survived for 30 million years is not likely to have done so because of weak genes. Indeed, it has been proven time and time again that the mosquito becomes immune to all these products, by whatever name they are called: Piff-Paff, Raid, Bygone or whatever. Haven’t you always wondered why the companies keep reintroducing the product as a "new and improved formula"? They are merely stronger versions of the earlier product. But new formulas just can’t keep up with the mosquitoes since they reproduce millions of larvae that are immune to even a gallon of this stuff. Another recently advertised favorite is a gadget that promises to chase away the mosquitoes. Yep, chase them out of one room and into another.
For more innovative and sometimes hilarious solutions to this age-old problem, turn to the Internet. One website (http://www.mosquitomagnet.com) offers to sell you the Mosquito Magnet which they claim is a machine that "mimics" a large mammal by emitting a plume of carbon dioxide, heat and moisture, which when combined with ocentol is irresistible to mosquitoes and "can be located near the mosquito breeding areas, trapping the mosquitoes at their source before they get to you. The mosquitoes are drawn away from you and to the Mosquito Magnet"! Another website touts the virtues of breeding bats, part of whose diet are mosquitoes.
If the prospect of raising bats, spraying your house with enough chemicals to make you high and having some machine that looks like a large mammal, doesn’t really appeal to you, here is a relatively cheap and rather satisfying solution. Zap them dead. You can buy these small machines, made in China or Japan, in most electronics shops; they are effective against all flying insects. The light attracts them, then the rod creates an electric shock that zaps them dead. Now instead of that infuriating bzzzzzzzzzzz sound around your head, you can enjoy the shriek that means the death of this pesky insect. Why, Rambo has nothing on this gizmo!