Blood Feud

I stare at the smashed remains of a mosquito on the wall next to my bed. I killed it at approximately 2 am last September, and it is now the middle of May. I’ve noticed it on the wall almost every night since I dispatched it. There are three more of his smooshed companions on other walls elsewhere in the room, and I’ve been keeping track of them too. I am moderately disgusted by their rusty smears on my off-white walls, but apparently not enough to prompt me to evict their carcasses from my room, my sleepy, think-tank haven.

I wonder if I like seeing them dead, remembering that I killed them, that I had my revenge upon their curse-of-man species. Maybe my haven requires reminders of my own power to kill, to avenge wrongs and deliver justice to the overt enemies of my body. (My body!) Of all of God’s creations, “bugs” offend me the most—not that I have a logical excuse.

Despite being a fly fisherman, one who aspires to emulate these critters, whenever I’m out on the river and the classic caddis hatch reaches its pinnacle (and trout feeding activity as well), I’m too busy swatting the back of my neck, fanning my hand in front of my face, and jetting air from my lower lip up towards the caddis crawling on my sunglasses to make a descent cast or, heaven forbid, catch a fish. (Have you ever had a 4-inch stonefly crawl up your sleeve? I have… and, yes, it produces girly squeals.)

Once the infamous West Nile Virus made its way to eastern Idaho, my official fishing Valhalla, I had an excuse to be paranoid about the “skeeters,” as the locals call them, and to redouble my efforts to kill any and all skeeters that I felt, heard, or imagined. After one post-dusk evening on the Henry’s Fork, and despite the 90% deet, I counted 44 bites on my hands face and neck. Too add to the misery, the deet started to give me a rash (perhaps what scares skeeters away might also intimidate living skin cells?). I was dating a nurse at the time, and she was overseeing the slow death of a West Nile victim in the ICU—tough farmer in his 50s, wife and kids. A couple days later, my tonsils started to swell up like they were fighting something threatening, but instead of rushing to the hospital, I prayed to God and reaffirmed our “understanding”, which certainly didn’t involve getting off easy with an early death. After that, I wasn’t worried.

Back to the hatred of skeeters, sometimes I started to swear at the trout for not eating more of the little bastards. Then I wondered if maybe it’s the smell of human blood in their bellies that keeps the trout away, and that even the larvae were spawn by our globules and DNA. Maybe my hate is in the blood too, and the trout don’t want to be sucked into the feud.

Sometimes I wonder where all of the mosquitoes’ predators have, apparently, gone. Apparently, they kill birds with West Nile: one down, several to go. Bats? Well, they sure weren’t around in the mid-afternoon near Bear Gulch when, despite the 90 degrees and standing in the middle of the river, I was so barraged by the bloodlusting foe that I abandoned a Salmon Fly hatch and gorging Cuts.

Is it because I don’t belong where they are? Is it because they don’t belong where I am? Apparently, mosquitoes are part of some grand and essential ecosystem. And apparently the tiny black gnat hovering in front of my face feels the need float in front of my right eye and make me feel self-conscious about whether or not I’m developing early-onset cataracts as well. There, that’s it: Maybe the bugs are supposed to make us self-conscious, or “them”-conscious, reminding us that we need to share our blood and salty tears with our hungry eco-chain gang. Maybe they just want to be noticed, thanked for their efforts, and grow a little frustrated when we ignore their billions of 24-hour life spans, and numb their stress, just like humans do, by overeating and copulating.

Well, I’ve just performed my first stage of gratitude-motivated penance by cleaning their guts off of my walls and will cease to flaunt their desiccated bodies as trophies of my manliness. Somehow I don’t feel like I’m ever going to stop mashing them when I see them, but it’s a give and take relationship, right?