Mosquito Abatement

A fictional travelogue; three minute read.

At the Black Bear diner in the university town of Davis, in Yolo County, the sharp slap—heard a full three booths away—turns heads. “Got it,” a college boy in a red baseball cap gloats.

Another mosquito terminated. Dead.

Seconds before smacking his blood-sucking predator, the red-hatted student was chewing his way through a ginormous Big Bear Burger. Weighing in at 1290 calories, the burger arrived at his table with a ten-inch dagger stabbed vertically into its juicy thickness. His companion, also college age, is breaking up a chicken pot pie pastry crust filled with chicken chunks, peas, carrots, mushrooms, onions in a creamy gravy.

As if their mini debate began in a dorm room days ago, they are well practiced wielding their talking points. They are talking over plates heaped high with onions rings and French fries, a napkin container, a grimy ketchup bottle, a half-full mustard dispenser.

Holding his burger in the air, red cap boy demands. “Are you fucking kidding me? You really like paying taxes?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. No one likes paying taxes,” his friend answers as smoothly as the gravy in his chicken pot pie. “But I do like dead mosquitoes, and government is best at eradicating them. Ever hear of the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District?” he taunts.

Now the debate has my focused, full attention. I'm itching to jump into the conversation, but I don’t intrude. I teach high school honors civics so I’d rather eavesdrop to see how their impromptu policy debate unfolds. Besides, my food is going cold.

As an inveterate traveler, a global vagabond, I steer clear of meadows and mountains swarming with mosquitoes. Instead, I hang out in museums, restaurants, theaters, castles, cathedrals—any indoor space without mosquitos.

In the animal kingdom, the second most murderous species is a mosquito. The damn insect takes out 725,000 people annually. Malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever, to name my biggest fears. If I happen to find myself out in the woods or any other place without a government agency tasked with executing mosquitoes, I drench myself with insect repellant.

To my disappointment, there’s no repellant to protect me from the first-place killer of humans—other humans. Small and large wars, domestic gun violence, traffic fatalities and the ability to annihilate the entire planet also scare me.

With youthful overconfidence, red cap plunges forward with his argument, “We don’t need government. Bats are Nature’s tax-free mosquito abatement program.”

He reports that he’s learned something about mosquito abatement. “I was at the University Bohart Museum of Entomology last week. It’s super cool. Largest collection of mosquito corpses in the world.”

“I read that the Yolo causeway, moving 150,000 vehicles every day, is also the roost for a colony of 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats. At night, nursing females fly at 100 miles an hour and at altitudes of 11,000 feet to forage for the insects breeding around here in the wetlands and rice paddies.”

Licking his chicken pot pie spoon, his friend pounces. “Did you forget the Bohart is funded with tax dollars? Did you purposely not mention all the government programs protecting bats?”

He piles on, “You’re a hypocrite.”

When the check arrives, neither offers to pay.

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