Blog 448 – 10.28.2016

It is almost Halloween and the scary movies are playing around the clock. Many of the most scary ones involve vampires, mythical living dead creatures of the night that feed on the blood of the living. A little song many of us learned as children says, “All creatures great and small the LORD God made them all.” But some of us may have our doubts about mosquitoes, the little blood suckers.

For several years now I have been living by a Code called Ten Intentions For A Better World. The First Intention states,  and I say it to myself and others often,

“I refrain from opposing or harming anyone. I allow others to have their own experiences. I see life in all things and honor it as if it were my own. I support life.”

Thinking on those words has caused me to re-evaluate a lot of my thinking. Yes, even my thinking about mosquitoes. I heard myself saying to a work crew the other day, “I will be so glad when it gets cold enough to kill off the mosquitoes.” We ought to listen a little more closely to what we say. Thankfully in most cases nobody else does. Why do mosquitoes get such a bad wrap? Oh, yeah we blame the spread of disease on them but hey they didn’t start it. It if it comes to their sucking blood, they don’t eat much and no more than they need to live and the host of other creatures that live on them, fish, and dragonflies in particular.

It is as Elton John sang in , “A Circle of Life.” Everything has place and plays a role. Someone jokingly said that Noah should have just have left the mosquitoes off the boat. That has got to be as hurtful a remark to mosquitos as someone suggesting a certain candidate for President’s father should have practiced birth control. To wish that anyone or anything should die or never have been born is to deny the gift of life, or to deny the gift to all of us that is that life.

I don’t know a great deal about mosquitoes but I intend to read all I can about them. And not so I can find better more effective way of killing them or repelling them but to try to understand and see the gift in them. Well, I read quite a bit and know a lot more than I did but the consensus of the several writers I read was that the mosquito is the most dangerous animal on the planet. Well, I think, that opinion a bit biased because it was written by the one species that holds that title hands down having wiping out more species that all of the other remaining ones combined. Roaches and mosquitoes have been here millions of years longer than man and unless we destroy the whole place with our foolish wars they will probably survive us.

Mosquitos are not the first or the last species to have gotten a bad rap that were later found to be beneficial. I, for one, plan to keep on seeing life in all creatures great an small and continuing to honoring all life as my own. Oh, and by the way guys it is the girl mosquitoes that are the blood suckers. Typical. Just kidding, ladies. And one more fun fact, some of the girl mosquitoes, the blood suckers, hibernate through the winter and live as long as six months while the male mosquitos live on average only about ten days surviving exclusively on plant nectar. So much for the benefits of a healthy diet and avoiding cholesterol for a longer life. Ha.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White