An Ode to a Mosquito Female - HolliWood HolliWood (reading strategies book .txt) 📗

"The female of a mosquito lays 30-150 or even 280 eggs every 2-3 days.

For egg production mosquitoes need blood,

that’s why the oviposition cycle is in direct proportion to the consumption of blood.

<…> In many species, the female needs to obtain nutrients from a blood meal before she can produce eggs, whereas in many other species, she can produce more eggs after a blood meal.

Both – plant materials and blood – are useful sources of energy in the form of sugars, and blood also supplies more concentrated nutrients, such as lipids, but the most important function of blood meals is to obtain proteins as materials for egg production.”

(Wikipedia, not a scientific source)

When the stalking buzzing violates the silence of the night, and you cannot help looking up the offender of your sleep somewhere in the air, you do not even guess what kind of crime against humanity you commit trying to kill the bloodsucker enraged...

Again and again an insect violates your peace buzzing pesky at your ear, and again it tries to sit down on your arm, or on your leg, or even more - ah what a squirt! - pops into your innermost nooks of your, such a precious, body.

Another second - and your patience will come to an end!

Your body, exhausted after a hard working day, longs for rest.

Eyelids stick together again and again unable to sleep and have a little rest from the constant looking either at a TV screen, or at the computer, or the smartphone. And even if the view stops on the book, you read some cheap novels "’bout love" or detectives which eventually also end with the intimate scene, and in the finale - "they lived happily ever after..."

Finally you’re not able to stand it any longer. You turn on a small table lamp; the light hurts eyes already accustomed to the darkness. You screw up your eyes for a minute or two, and sit down on the bed. For a moment you even forget why the light is on, and then you recall…

A mosquito.

After totally being woken up, you get up out of bed, take a fly swatter (or a newspaper, or a book, or something else that is near and is strong enough to get rid of it - that insect, that tiresome buzz that torments you not this one night or month), vigilant, now totally sober view you gaze at every inch of the wall in search of that tiny problem. After all, that’s what it is - an undesirable problem which doesn’t let you sleep at night.

You think you will be able to sleep the moment you get rid of it… You think when a tiny creature which eats nutritious substances from your blood die, you can safely close your eyelids and sleep…

And hasn’t it come up to your mind that by destroying that gray insect which feeds on your (and not only your) - but if think well there’s no one else in the house - blood, you destroy yourself, your future?

"It's just an insect!" – you say. - "Not a human, not an animal, not even a rare tree or flower! It's just a mosquito."

"A mosquito female," - I reply. - "And this is a big difference."

You walk around the room like a spooky apparition with a formidable weapon in your hands - twisted up newspaper. You scrutinize every wall searching for a damn mosquito female. "Where the hell is it now?" – you think.

Hmm… The mosquito female indeed is a heroine. It managed to hide in this vast space - so small and inconspicuous itself, like a speck. And it doesn’t give a sound.

Hmm… The mosquito female indeed is clever girl, although no one educated her. Her only education is a natural mission. Her only goal is to survive at any cost, to live as much as needed to lay eggs. To stay alive as long as it is needed to become a mother.

Hmm… The mosquito female does deserve an ode.

Translation: HolliWood (translation from Ukrainian)
Publication Date: 06-24-2013

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