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Creature Feature: Mosquitoes
I am sitting here writing right now trying to
focus on the words I want to use, but distracted by several raw welts on my legs, back and neck. It is mosquito season,
and the little bastards are out in full force right now. I hate them. I loathe them with every fiber of my being
(and even some other fiber that I have outside my being). Mosquitoes are unstoppable foes. Sure, you can use DEET or
some other repellant, but that never stops them completely. And worse, once you are bit there is little you can do to
stop the itching.
What is going on here? We're a modern civilization. We've gone to the moon, bitch-smacked a comet, created television,
the Internet, this creepy Japanese replicant and we can't
get rid of a single annoying little bug? (OK, there are bazillions of them, but still, you get the point).
Well, this little pest, one of the world's most formidable disease carriers, has had millions of years to perfect its
blood-sucking tools. Perhaps it is too much to ask of a species a mere few hundred thousand years old to take them on.
But we try.
Well, in the name of helping fellow gadling readers to learn more about the mosquito, I am posting some links about
the mosquito. From the biology of these pesky bugs, to articles on DEET and the ineffectiveness of bug zappers, there
is more than enough here to keep mosquito haters both well-informed and frustrated that no real solution to the
mosquito problem is on the horizon. So click on and enjoy!
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Wikipedia on mosquitoes, always a great source of info
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Wonderful site from the Howstuffworks folks about mosquitoes
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A well-done site that looks at mosquto biology and efforts to stop the pest.
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A brief, but nicely-done primer on how mosquitoes bug us
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All about DEET, pretty much the only known effective repellant
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What you need to know about West-Nile virus
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Mosquito, the Book. One of the best histories of the mosquiito out there (yes, I've read it. It is superb)
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The skinny on bug zappers and why they DON'T work
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Willy Dec 18th 2005 5:07PM
Don't forget that mosquitoes cause malaria (http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/index.htm), which is the most common and deadly parasitic disease in the world (http://www.malaria.org/).
Tom Van Ness Dec 18th 2005 5:07PM
Good cure for the itching - put the bite under running tap water, then turn on pure hot water - the water will get hotter and hotter. Keep your skin there until you can't handle it anymore. The hot water metabolizes some of the venom and the itch goes away for at least several hours. Works great for me, as I get crazy itchy from mosquitos.