Exterminating Circumstance

by John Christmann

I have a confession to make. I am a mass murderer.

In retrospect, I should have seen the warning signs long ago. When I was a kid I once put some beetles on a scrap of wood and let them float helplessly out into the creek behind my house. I did not give them life jackets. Another time I sent a couple of spiders up in a model rocket only to have the payload section float back down to earth empty. They had no parachutes. I even performed experiments on ants one bright summer day with a magnifying glass. It was not something I have ever seen repeated on the cooking channel.

But this pales in comparison to the wholesale slaying of mosquitoes to which I now confess. You see I hate the things. They buzz like tiny dive bombers around my ear and when I swat them against my neck they conveniently disappear, laughing I am sure, as they circle for their next attack. They bite me in places I did not know existed; the tops of my ears, behind my knees, my eyelids, and when I wear baggy shorts, a few other unmentionable places. They suck my blood and put me at risk for diseases like Malaria and Yellow Fever and probably even Gingivitis. They serve no purpose on earth other than to spoil outdoor activities in the summer.

But the real problem is this: I am a mosquito magnet. I am big and heavy, I sweat, and I have a lot of surface skin area which is exposed in the summer. It seems that the very thing that turns most people off seems to turn mosquitoes on. And no amount of DEET aftershave deters them.

This year the mosquitoes around my house have been particularly bad, and after a nice outdoor meal on our deck was ruined by these annoying insects, my wife looked at me and said: “We need to do something about the mosquitoes.” Of course, what she really meant me was, “You need to do something about the mosquitoes.” Because when it comes to the nasty business of extermination, I am the designated Grim Reaper.

Several years ago my wife called me in a panic while I was out running errands.
“You have to come home right away,” she said. “There’s a mouse in the family room.” She was calling me from atop a chair.

When I arrived the family room was shut tight and towels were placed at the bottom of the door so the mouse would have no possibility of escape. My wife was still standing on the chair.
“It’s in there,” she said, pointing.
I looked at the towels wedged tightly under the door.
“It might be dead of suffocation,” I told her as I reached for the door knob.
“NO!” she screamed. “Don’t open the door. It might get out!”
“How am I supposed to get in?” I asked.
“Can’t you go in through a window?”

I grabbed a fish net and affixed it to the end of a broom with duct tape, then slung the ingenious trap over my shoulder. I looked at my wife. “Where is my pith helmet?” I asked. “How can I be the great white hunter without a pith helmet?”
She didn’t think this was very funny.
I inched open the door, squeezed in, and then quickly closed it behind me. My wife gasped.
“I’m in!” I called out though the door, just in case she was worried.
I looked around and immediately spied a small gray mouse wedged in the far corner of the room. It was not much bigger than a spool of thread and shaking so violently I thought it was convulsing. I made eye contact with my prey and crept steadily forward. The mouse did not move; it was too scared. I slowly advanced the fish net and with a quick thrust and flick of the wrist brought the net down over the poor creature. It peed on the floor.
“It’s OK!” I called out. “The mouse has been contained. I repeat. The mouse has been contained. I’m coming out.”
My wife didn’t answer. She had locked herself in the bathroom.

I took the frightened rodent outside far from the house and let it go. I couldn’t bring myself to kill it. I kept thinking of him in white gloves and shorts with buttons, his girl at home waiting anxiously for his return in a red polka dot dress.
“You are free,” I told the mouse. “Now take your family and go infest Disney World.”

But that was one mouse. Thousands of mosquitoes were something quite different to get rid of. Even so, I hadn’t thought of killing them. I just wanted them to go bother someone else.
“What we need is a bigger mosquito magnet,” I announced. “Something more irresistible than me.”
My wife looked confused. “What are you suggesting?”
“I think we should buy a cow and put it in the back yard.” I said. “It will attract mosquitoes and flies all summer, we can have fresh milk, and I won’t have to mow the lawn.”
My wife wisely let me work through the consequences on my own.

It was time for some expert advice. I went to our local hardware store and explained my problem to an elderly man dressed in overalls. He listened patiently, occasionally stroking his chin with his fingers.
“Ever think about buying a cow?” he said.

On our way back to the Pesticide Aisle he explained a few things to me.
“Mosquitoes have been around for millions of years,” he said.
“I know,” I said, “That’s about how long they have been biting me.”
“It’s actually the females that bite,” he continued, ignoring me. “The males just mate and die.”
He chuckled as we passed by a shelf stocked with weed killers.
“Anyway, the women go off in a frenzy to find blood to nourish the thousands of eggs they are growing. They are attracted to carbon dioxide and heat and stinky sweat.” He sniffed the air. “They probably like you a lot,” he added.

The back of the store where we soon found ourselves was poorly lit, and a lone fluorescent bulb flickered intermittently sending us into spasms of darkness. The shelves were lined with dozens of sprays and traps and chemical formulations designed to do one thing: kill bugs. On the black labels were happy pictures of insects fleeing for their lives.

“What you need is one of these babies,” said Mr. Overalls. He was pointing to an egg-shaped device that was perched on a stand about three feet high. It looked like a Martian barbeque grill. Resting in the base was a propane tank.
“Now this is a mosquito magnet,” he said. And he was right. On the front of the unit in big capital letters it said Mosquito Magnet.
“It is fueled by propane,” he explained. “It uses a catalytic conversion process to create carbon dioxide which is then laced with a scent female mosquitoes find utterly irresistible.”
Oddly, I felt a bit jealous.
“When the mosquitoes follow the plume to the Mosquito Magnet here a vacuum sucks them up into a net where they dehydrate and turn to dust.”
I pictured the process in my mind. Ashes to ashes, I thought. As bug genocide goes, this was pretty palatable.

A few hours later I was home with my brand new Mosquito Magnet. The sky threatened rain, but I was eager to rid my backyard of pesky mosquitoes as soon as possible. I quickly set the unit up and placed it in the middle of the yard as the winds began to jump and dark clouds choked light from the sky. It didn’t look that attractive to mosquitoes I thought, so I belted the propane tank in some shorts and placed a dirty T shirt over the egg-shaped body of the Mosquito Magnet.
“What do you think?” I asked my young son who was watching me intently.
His eyes brightened. “Just like you, Dad!” he replied. “Only it smells better.”

I opened the valve and threw the vacuum switch. A flash of lightening threw us into relief, accompanied immediately by a huge explosion of thunder. The Mosquito Magnet began to hum and a sweet sticky smell oozed out into the stormy summer air.
“It’s alive!” I screamed. And then it started to pour.

Through rain streaked windows we looked at the drenched contraption working alone out in the lawn.
“Dad, where do mosquitoes go when it rains?” asked my son.
“That’s a good question.” I said. I had no idea. It was something Mr. Overalls failed to explain.
I heard a faint buzzing around my ear. I slapped my head hard, only to have the buzzing return again. And again. And again.

My son stared at me smacking myself in the face.
Then he returned his gaze out the window.
“Maybe they go inside,” he said.

© 2008 Dadinthebox.com