News That Stays News

How ’bout them mosquitoes? August 2, 2013

 This is, I swear, the last I’ll write about mosquitoes. But they feature so heavily here for two reasons. First, they are a nearly omnipresent inspiration while I’m out looking for caterpillars, which is when I think up most of these posts. Second, they are a nearly omnipresent topic of conversation among people at the station. As far as I can tell, at Palo Verde mosquitoes fill the places in conversation normally held by the weather and sports elsewhere. The weather, because variation in the number of mosquitoes is generally greater than the variation in temperature, wind, or precipitation, and has a lot more to do with whether it is a “nice day” or not. Sports, because the contest of People vs. Mosquitoes is as all-consuming as any entrenched sports rivalry.

I would say that it was impossible to argue about mosquitoes, except that one of the OTS students and I disagreed ferociously about the word’s etymology. I gave it as an example of a Swahili word that had made it into English. She disagreed, and five minutes later one of the six rather shell-shocked people who had had the misfortune to sit at the same table for breakfast firmly declared the topic closed until someone could produce actual facts.

The verdict: “mosquito” is Spanish, ultimately originating from the Latin musca (fly). This is particularly embarrassing as there are a genus and family of flies called Musca and the Muscidae, respectively, which I taught in my capacity as Entomology TA. I stand corrected.