The buzz about the ladies of Fern Forest

As I’ve complained elsewhere in this blog, the summer sun in Florida is hot. Brutally hot. When it’s on, like it is today, it feels like you’ve somehow wandered into a humid blast furnace. Clothes, if you’re wearing them, pull the sweat out of you (the technical term for this is transpiration) and then stick to you like glue. The sweat that doesn’t get mopped up by your clothes drips down your arms, your legs, your face. It’s just plain hot.

Trouble is, it doesn’t pay to stroll around in the south Florida sun naked, either. (No, I’m not going to post a link there. This is a family blog!) Sunburn is simply too likely.

So, given that you have to wear clothes, both for UV protection and to comply with local law, what can one do? I, for one, can’t give up going outdoors. And my leisure moments usually happen to come at lunchtime, the hottest part of the day. My solution? Walk in the woods. It’s shady, and there’s usually a cool breeze.

When the breeze is lacking, however, and one can find shade, one might be tempted to dress in shorts, t-shirts, and other typical hot weather gear.

That’s not an option for me. After all, the ladies love me. If I let them catch a glimpse of me in a t-shirt and shorts, it would all be over in a New York minute. Or, to be more precise, they would be all over me. And we can’t have that. After all, the ladies I’m talking about belong to a certain class, or, if we’re being taxonomically accurate, a certain family, that most decent folk try to avoid: I’m talking about the Culicidae. And they are among the most tenacious feeders, and breeders, on the planet. They are a vector for numerous diseases, among them malaria, yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus… Need I go on? That’s right, these “ladies” are mosquitoes.

So I take my lunchtime nature walks, whether in the hot sun or the cool shade, in my long sleeved dress shirt and my long pants. To which I add my trusty Tilley Hat.* And in the summer, I sweat. But I don’t get sunburned, and I keep the attention of the ladies confined to my hands and face, which, let’s face it, is about as much attention as I need…

Serendipitous NPR segment: Robert Krulwich had a piece on Morning Edition today as I was driving to work, celebrating David Quammen’s nearly 30-year-old essay in Outside magazine, “Three Nice Things We Can Say About Mosquitoes,” which we can sum up here as follows:

• First, half of all mosquitoes (the males) don’t bite.
• Second, the females bite because they are such good mommies. (With few exceptions, mosquitoes need a blood meal in order to lay their eggs.)
• And third, biting mosquitoes, ferocious vectors of equally ferocious diseases, might well have been the planet’s front line of defense against man’s exploitation of the tropical rain forests.

And Quammen was right on, although I would add a fourth nice thing we can say: mosquito larvae are among the more abundant sources of an entire web of beauty. They are a primary source of protein, not only for the “pretty” insects that we enjoy more than the mosquito (Odonata, etc.), but for the entire riverine, lacustrine, and palustrine ecosystems: fish eat either the larvae directly, or prey upon the dragonfly nymphs that do; wading birds prey upon the fish and crustaceans, etc. It’s a web of beauty, founded upon the lowly mosquito larva, known to many of us as “wrigglers.”

Krulwich’s piece reminded me of an earlier interview I’d heard on NPR with Florida’s “mosquito man,” George O’Meara.

So abundant were these little beasts in Florida that they have given their name to many of our more notable geographic features: the Mosquito Lagoon, near Cape Canaveral; Mosquite Bite–er, I mean Snake Bight Trail, in Everglades National Park; the original name of the Ponce de Leon Inlet was given by the Spaniards: Barro de Mosquitoes.

The efforts to control this airborne insect in our state were nothing less than heroic. Nevertheless, nowadays I would prefer that we not use broad-spectrum pesticides or even larvicides. The best control of mosquitoes is to not leave open standing water, like the zillions of swimming pools in foreclosed homes in Florida. And do as I do: when outside, take preventive measures.

* Full disclosure: I am not affiliated in any way with Tilley Endurables, nor do I receive any consideration of any kind for linking to their website. I simply like their hat!

[UPDATE: Further search on NPR revealed this piece about potential alternatives to DEET, which, as all amateur astronomers can tell you, melts the plastic right off their equipment.]

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