May 13, 2002
DOWN HOME:
Skeeter-eaters don't eat much
___As we count our blessings, our family has been thankful the skeeter-eaters haven't been so bad this year.
___Do you have skeeter-eaters at your house? We don't know what they're really called, but we call them skeeter-eaters. They look sort of like mosquitoes on steroids--huge filmy flittery things with long legs and an obvious attraction to light.
___In the middle of spring, skeeter-eaters congregate at our back door so they can zoom in every time we let Betsy, our dog, in or out. Then they fly around the lights and eventually die--upside down--on the floor. (We'll get back to that later.)
MARV KNOX
Editor
___As far as we can tell, they don't really do much harm or much good. They look like--if they were real mosquitoes, anyway--they could suck about a half-pint of blood out of hapless victims. But they don't seem to have a taste for man, woman or beast. And if they really did eat mosquitoes, we'd be set forever. We could "wrangle" them and sell them to swampy places like Mississippi or Florida and retire at a very early age.
___But all they do is hang out by our back door, fly in when Betsy goes out, flit around the lights and die--upside down--on the floor.
___Lindsay, our 18-year-old, hates them worse than anyone else in the family. Probably because they look like mosquitoes, and she hates mosquitoes. I'm just glad she doesn't hate bald guys with crows' feet, because that's what I look like.
___The most fascinating thing about skeeter-eaters is their ability to die upside down. We've swept up approximately 2,348,971 dead skeeter-eaters, and I don't think we've ever found one right-side up. Spiders die upside-down, too.
___Lindsay wants to see if she can watch a bug die. She's not masochistic, you understand. She's just curious: Do they flip over on their backs just before they die, exerting their last scintilla of strength for eternal repose? Or do they die because they fall over on their backs and can't get up?
___Bugs present us with all sorts of questions. Some are even theological. Wouldn't you love to ask the Lord: "Why fire ants?" I've studied biology and the food chain and all that, but for the life of me, I can't figure out a good reason to put up with fire ants until we all get to heaven. If fire ants aren't there (which I'm supposing they won't be, since they're "fire" ants), what a day of rejoicing that will be.
___In the meantime, I'm glad we had a very late cold snap, which apparently wiped out zillions of skeeter-eaters this year.
___And I'm also thanking God that, if they have to exist, some bugs are so small.
___Just think: If wasps were the size of Chihuahuas, they'd rule the world.
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