Lamar Howell's Weblog

“Lazy mosquito” is an oxymoron. The critter is anything but lazy. Mosquitos are tiny, almost weightless,  extremely busy creatures.  Airborne pests who make stealth landings. The only way you know they are there is when they circumnavigate your head. Their wings beat 250 times a second, creating a buzz which may well correspond in ratio to the deafening noise made by an Apache helicopter. The poor mosquito is not known for longevity. The mosquito lives only about three weeks.

The Galapagos giant tortoise ,on the other hand, is a monstrous, somnambulant-looking creature who ignores the command to hurry. He is known to live up to two hundred years. Meat from a killed tortoise could feed an entire village. 

The mosquito and the giant tortoise are on opposite sides of the lifespan scale. They can both teach us a lesson about life. Everyone stands in awe of the Galapagos tortoise.  They will playfully crawl onto his back for a ride but cautiously avoid the lock-down grip of his jaws. The tortoise is admired, but is not feared nor respected like the tiny, transient, disease-bearing mosquito.

The tortoise minds his own business, but the mosquito is out for blood. Nectar will satisfy the male, but the female must have blood in order to reproduce. She attacks the very source of life itself. Unlike the tortoise, the mosquito never rests. Try to imagine a mosquito in repose saying to itself, “I don’t have anything to do today.” No. A mosquito knows his days are numbered —  one to twenty-one, and he stays ardently busy.

Are you like the tortoise or the mosquito? Sad to say, many people imitate the behavior and nature of the tortoise. They live their life with no sense of urgency.  A little leisure here, a little party there, a few pretty things here, a shiny car there. Tomorrow I’ll find something else. Oh, and throw in a bit of faith.

Let the tortoises of the world live on forever, but I want to be like the mosquito. True they do not live a long life, but the days they have they live with gusto. They are passionate little things who will go for the pink flesh of peasant or king. The daring insect would even careen Apache-like toward the black uniforms of a dangerously armed S.W.A.T. team, with a singular task — Go for the jugular!

It is interesting that mosquitoes never travel over a mile from the place they were hatched. But they know their destiny is driven by bloodlust. In some strange way, the mosquito reminds me of someone else who lived his life with extreme passion and singular purpose, whose destiny was inextricably linked to blood. Even his birth was a sword that pierced the flesh of his own mother. He  never travelled far from his birthplace, nor lived a long life. Those who loved their own flesh killed him, and stained all our hands with his blood.

Before you swat the next mosquito, pause to ask yourself: Which one of us is really living?