Requiem for a mosquito

I originally published this blog in August 2010. In light of my renewed interest in blogging, online marketing and all things digital, I'm giving it a second life.

The weirdest thing happened yesterday. I watched a mosquito die. And I felt sad.

I first noticed the little bloodsucker flying around my office window, trying in vain to break free. “Oh great,” I thought, “it probably bit me.” I thought about squishing it against the pane of glass but then I remembered a conversation I had with a friend recently in which we both professed our disdain for killing living things. I guess that includes mosquitoes too. Now if one is biting you, my friend said, that’s considered a karmic push and you’re justified in pushing back. But I hadn’t seen this particular bug latched on to me anywhere, so I left him to his futile buzzing.

This is how boring my day was – I kept checking back to see whether the mosquito had flown away or whether he was still in my midst. That’s when I noticed he’d stopped flying and was just sitting on the sill. “He’s not even going to make a move for me,” I thought. "Silly mosquito. Food is just a few feet away and you’re calling it quits."

I checked back in on my bug friend a few more times, but he stayed in place. Still twitching a leg now and then, but no longer flying. Then it dawned on me: he’s sitting there waiting to die. It’s weird, but I actually felt sorry for him. I couldn’t help thinking how horrible it must be to starve to death or die of thirst – I’m not sure which of these was his fate. Maybe the clock had just run out on him and he had nothing left to do but wait to stop breathing.

Is that what death is like? Or more accurately, is that what life is like? Sometimes I think so. On those days when I’m home alone with plenty of things to do but no motivation to do them, am I just sitting there waiting to stop breathing? Will anyone notice me in my final hours? Or will I sit on the window sill, wings still, waiting for the inevitable?

I came into the office this morning, and sure enough, the mosquito was still sitting in my window, though now he was officially dead. No rigor mortis, no comic-style legs up in the air, just complete inertia. I slid a piece of paper underneath him and deposited him in the trash so I wouldn’t keep looking at him all day. But it didn’t matter; I kept thinking about him anyway. He didn’t die via a deadly swat, but on his own terms, in his own time. All in all not a bad way to leave this world. When it’s my turn I hope fate affords me the same luxury.

My accidental garden

My backyard bird feeder started out like any other, with a long black pole, a seed container and some sunflower seeds. I was hoping to attract some cardinals and finches to my yard. What I got was a veritable menagerie.

Once the black stake was firmly in the ground with the glass and metal seed container filled to the brim and screwed securely on top, I went inside and waited. Peering out my kitchen window every few minutes, I wondered how long it would take the birds to discover their new buffet.

It took longer than I thought for the first visitor to arrive. It was a nondescript little brown bird—possibly a sparrow. I kept watching and waiting for his colorful cousins to arrive. Little by little, more birds showed up to the feeder.

There were noisy black starlings. Nervous doves. A pair of cardinals began to visit every day around sunset. Plenty of small brown birds I couldn’t identify showed up too.

Then came the squirrels. At first they were content to forage among the scattered seeds on the ground that the birds had knocked out of the feeder. But soon they were shimmying up the pole til they reached the top, where they would perch precariously and balance with their tails while raiding the feeder.

Between the birds and the squirrels, dozens of seeds were scattered on the ground. And despite the nonstop foraging around the feeder, little looked-over seedlings soon began to sprout. By the next time I was ready to mow the lawn, a forest of sunflowers was taking shape around my feeder.

Dodging the seedlings with the lawnmower became a game. I wanted to see how high they would grow. If all of them reached maturity, I’d have 40-50 sunflowers crowded around my feeder!

Some of the young plants became rabbit fodder. The entire family of squirrels that started hanging out beneath the feeder probably flattened a few too. But the majority of the flowers grew taller and taller, creating a canopy under which the birds and squirrels could escape from the hot summer sun.

Now it’s August, and the flowers have burst into bloom. Bees collect nectar from them, and vivid yellow finches grasp the flowers with their tiny feet, picking out seeds one by one. Nature is putting on a show in my backyard, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. The grass beneath the dense flowers is trampled and littered with seed hulls. It will have to be replanted, but the enjoyment the bright yellow flowers and the creatures they’ve attracted have brought me make my accidental garden well worth the effort.

Butterflies in winter?

I just returned from a weekend trip to Chicago with my daughters. We had a great time, but the cold weather made getting around harder – to say the least. What typically would have been nice walks from our hotel to nearby restaurants turned into trudging through the snow against the cold winter wind, and cab rides won out over walking more times than not.

Now that I’m back, I just learned about a place that, if we had visited, might have infused some summer-like spirit into our experience. The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum has a real-life butterfly garden on its second floor. And what says summer more than butterflies flitting around? I bet that 2,700 square-foot greenhouse is nice and warm, and no mittens or earmuffs are required to walk around among the 75 species of butterflies that reside there.

To be sure, we enjoyed the museums and attractions we visited despite the weather. But if I ever visit Chicago again during the winter – or any other season for that matter – I’m going to put the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum at the top of my places to visit.