The mosquitoes are here.
They arrive in a wave. First visible passing by wetlands at dusk, they grow thicker and thicker, until there are billowing clouds of them, humming at the ready. Entering the driveway is like plunging into an ocean of tiny, thrumming bodies, each hungry for blood.
You get out of the car, and everyone screams, “Run, run, RUN!” You race to the house, but the key always sticks in the lock, so you have to jimmy it and jiggle it, swatting and swerving at your bloodthirsty miniature attackers. The door unlocked but firmly shut, you run around in a circle before diving inside. SLAM! Only a small percentage of mosquitoes—so, perhaps 50—has entered with you. Buzz. They’re not shy about announcing their presence.
You’re tired. We’re all tired. It was a long winter. The longest winter, and no, we’re not talking about that Laura Ingalls Wilder book where they had to flavor their soup with tiny pieces of onion and potato from the cellar.1 We’re talking winter 2023, which lasted with great gusto until the beginning of May.
How did this happen? Reader, I have discovered the answer.
As the calendar turned, the weather gods put their heads together. All the humans are whining and moaning and saying they want “spring,” said the North Wind.
I know! said the God of Lightning, a capricious deity who flickered as they spoke, Let’s give them INSTANT SUMMER.
Yes, said the Sun God, a solemn deity with burning eyes, let’s remind them that climate change is happening. Let’s make some fires burn in Alberta. Let’s make it 85 degrees in the North at the end of May!
And let’s give them lots of mosquitoes, the God of Mist and Fog said with great glee.
So it was decided, and the weather gods declared their meeting at an end, and the plan was enacted.
It became spring and for a few days, the people in the North wandered about dazed and said, “It’s like a miracle,” a miracle that anything green could grow. They looked in wonder upon trailing arbutus and buried their faces in crab apple blossoms and pranced about under lilacs. They brought irises into the houses and stared in stupefied awe at the velveteen perfection of their petals, the extraordinary purple that no human-made art could ever capture. They sat outside on their decks and they sobbed faintly because just a week before that, if they’d sat outside they would have been covered in about a foot of snow.
Then the mosquitoes arrived. And after the mosquitoes came the heat. The sun staring down, the warmth inescapable. Dry soil drifted up from the garden when the humans tried to plant things. The once-wide river shriveled in its banks, a mud-flat consequence of the merciless combination of rainless skies and local politics. A single drop of water fell from a cloud onto the cheek of a person slathered in a chemical cocktail of sunscreen and bug spray.
The weather gods reconvened. Well, said the God of Meteorologists, Weather-persons and Other Befuddled Augurs of the Sky, have they started thinking about extreme weather conditions and how they affect the planet as a whole?
Maybe they’ve decided to cut carbon emissions, said the God of Clouds (Nimbus, Cumulonimbus, etc.).
I’ll bet they’re planning to meet as a global community, said the God of Lovely Sunsets, with a sweet, sinking sigh. I bet they’ll be making changes climatologists have recommended for decades now!
They all looked expectantly at the God of Humanity, who as always looked a bit shell-shocked, as if they still couldn’t believe that when the deities of the cosmos divided up their jobs, the God of Humanity had chosen humans. And had volunteered.
Well….it HAS brought them together…. the God of Humanity said waveringly, and everyone else leaned forward in anticipation. The God of Humanity drew a great breath, and said: They’ve come together as a community…to complain about the mosquitoes.
The weather gods looked at each other in deep dismay. This had not been the plan. Not at all. Where was the thought and reflection? The discovery of altruism? The realization that we are all inextricably interconnected, and by “we,” not merely humanity but every living being, every thing that grows, everything that exists? The realization that we must treat everything as precious, that we must recognize ourselves in others, the understanding that—
The gods gave up.
“So much for this exercise,” they said. “We might as well release the dragonflies.”
And lo, the humans of the north were glad.
I hope you all enjoy my more humorous posts. I promise, I’ll be more serious next time. 🥸
And thanks for your patience in my skipping a week last week due to Memorial Day and general busyness!
Also one of the longest novels I ever yawned through as a child, along with The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis.