All God's Creatures

Our dog Norm just loves being outdoors.  If left to his own devices, he'd spend pretty much every waking moment out in our fenced and wooded back yard, where he chases squirrels and chipmunks, sniffs about, and entertains himself by gathering fallen sticks and branches and piling them in the middle of the small lawn.  We try not to leave him out for more than an hour, as the longer he spends out there the more feral he becomes, but it's hard not to indulge the boy.  Given that the first two years of his life were all in shelters, the freedom to run and leap and dig is...well...it's kind of why we got him.  

Having a dog in the house reminds us that we're not the only living things in this world.  It helps remind us that all of God's creatures deserve our care and our love.

Yesterday, as I walked through the basement, I saw him sitting right by the sliding doors to the back yard.  

Around him, in a great swarming cloud, were a host of mosquitoes.  Drawn by his panting exhalations, filled with the carbon dioxide and organics whose scent trail they follow to their prey, there were dozens and dozens of them, both the little whiny-winged natives and the largest and fiercely striped Asian Tigers.  It's been wetter lately, after a long dry summer season, and all of the local subspecies of the Family Culicidae have come roaring back with a vengeance.  Norm looked resigned.

I muttered choice imprecations at the little beasts, and went to get the Swatter, which I bought as a gift for the missus a few years back.  It's one of those plastic racquetball racket shaped paddle thingummies, where in the place of strings are interlaced three layers of metal mesh.  The middle, inmost layer is electrified, drawing a surprising amount of current from a pair of Double A batteries in the handle.  

It is designed for the purpose of destroying flying insects, at which it is remarkably and satisfyingly efficacious.

I slid the door open, at which Norm barreled in and went charging up the stairs, leaving his assailants behind.  Then I waded out into the lingering swarm, safety off, power engaged.

It was a slaughter, as the snap crackle and pop of current frying skeeter after skeeter was nearly continuous.  Sparks flashed like heat lighting across the surface of my weapon, and the air filled with the smell of burning and electrical discharge.  Within moments the ground around me was littered with dozens of tiny lifeless corpses.  I continued for a while, methodically sweeping my thirteen-dollar Chinese plastic Mjolnir through the air, watching for any furtive and shadowy movement that might indicate more of them incoming, then smiting them from the air like a Norse god.  When no more remained, and no more came to replace them, I withdrew.

It wasn't a particularly peaceful interlude in my afternoon, I'll admit.  It was a wee bit asymmetric.  Perhaps a little unfair.  I, a sentient bipedal creature, social and industrialized.  They, little more than self-replicating mechanisms, oblivious of their place in being or my campaign against them.  I mean, they are still living beings, albeit simple and parasitic.  They are remarkably complex, and remarkably rare in the universe.  I generally find that I'm inclined to live in harmony with life around me, which is one of the reasons I choose not to eat other animals.

But then again, mosquitoes are our most implacable nonhuman adversary.  Forget grizzlies and tigers, because mosquitoes, as a disease vector, kill a million human beings every year.  We do not need to tolerate that which destroys us, any more than bees tolerate predatory hornets, or dolphins tolerate sharks.  Life is permitted to protect itself.

And Lord, was it satisfying. 

Vegetarian Mosquitoes and Other Theological Absurdities

In my battles against the tiny bloodsucking beasties in my backyard, I've followed that ancient adage: Know thy enemy.

My enemy, as I blogged yesterday, is the Aedes Albopictus. She, for the men are mellow flower children, exists for one purpose. She wants to get a snack for her children, and that snack involves my protein-rich vital bodily fluids. She's very, very well designed for that purpose.

Unlike the mosquitoes who were native to ol' Virginny, Ms. Tiger is a strong and nimble flyer. She does not emit a tell-tale whine as she swoops by my ear, because stealth means you don't get squashed. What is most astounding about mosquitoes is how elegantly they do what they do. Their penetrating proboscis is sharper than any doctor's needle, and is a complex array of razor-sharp microneedles around a central tube. It causes no pain, which, again, means Ms. Tiger doesn't become a bloody splotch on your palm.

But yesterday, as I was musing over my marvelous opponent, I found myself wondering about how Ken Ham explains all of this. Ken Ham is the director of the Creation Museum, the place where fundamentalist Christianity goes to reassure itself of its own sanity. You might ask, why is the mosquito a problem for Creationists? If you're just making the argument for complexity in design as evidence of a Creator, the mosquito is not necessarily a bad place to start. Yeah, it's annoying. But when you look at it deeply, it becomes marvelously annoying.

The problem for literal Creationists is that they argue that every creature in Eden was a vegetarian. They have to. It's right there in Genesis, clear as day. It ain't just animals, neither. It's everything that has life and breath.

As a vegetarian Christian, I enjoy this immensely, because it adds to my natural vegetarian smugness. Seriously, though, I do think it speaks to what it means to live together in peace, and to our ultimate purpose in Creation. The lion cannot lay down with the lamb if mint jelly is in that lamb's immediate future.

The Creation Museum folks make this case about pretty much every major carnivore. They all have to be originally intended as vegetarians. Lions? Bears? Those big teeth are actually designed used for...um...coconuts. Or opening bags of Doritos. Even Velociraptors, who they argue lived in peace with Adam and Eve, have those huge slashing claws so they can...um...dig for radishes, which then require razor sharp fangs to eat.

But the mosquito? They do try to make the argument that mosquitos were supposed to be vegetarian. According the Creationist narrative, God, as part of the curse of the Fall, made a few minor tweaks in existing creatures. But...err...that's pretty much a total change from what a mosquito exists to do.

It's proboscis exists to painlessly penetrate the living flesh of a target. A particularly persistent creationist would assert that this could also penetrate a banana. And you don't want that banana to feel anything. Problem is, the mosquito also injects an organic anticoagulant into it's prey. This substance serves one purpose: to prevent blood from clotting as it is consumed by the mosquito. Bananas and pomegranates do not clot. They just don't. That's a nontrivial part of mosquito design. It's their entire reproductive cycle.

Quite frankly, it's not coherently explicable even within the Creationist mindset. That ain't gonna stop 'em from trying. They live for vast, convoluted and ultimately unbiblical hypotheses in defense of their pointless and unnecessary literalism.

I confess to be amazed at the intricacy of a mosquito, and that amazement translates into a wonder at the vastness and complexity of God's creation. I am also give God thanks that as a sentient being, I can use what I know about the little buggers to take 'em down.

I am a Stone Cold Killer

I'd make a lousy Jain.

The Jain, for those of you who haven't taken any recent survey courses on world religions, are the Gentlest Faith(tm). They are, by belief, utterly unwilling to harm any creature. A Jain will pay close attention to where they walk, so that they do not inadvertently step on a bug. Some Jain will not eat root vegetables, like potatoes, because consuming them does too much harm to the plant in question.
For them, every creature is possibly divine, and all creatures are due respect and honor. I'm not quite sure if they've managed to persuade their autoimmune systems of this, but I don't doubt they anguish over every bacteria that's destroyed.

I, on the other hand, take a deep and barbarous pleasure in my ongoing battle against my mortal enemies: the mosquitoes.

When we moved into our house ten years ago, our back yard was a marvelous woody place, the sort of place that little boys delight in. We soon discovered, however, that the yard did not belong to us. It belonged to the Aedes albopictus, the Asian Tigers. They are an invasive species, which swept into our corner of Virginny about a quarter century ago. Fierce, hungry, strong fliers, they pretty much guarantee that you'll be covered in itchy welts as soon as summer arrives.

And ooh, I hates 'em. I've tried all manner of weapons. Six years ago, I bought a massively overpriced propane-powered mosquito trap, which managed to catch about two mosquitoes a day. Once you factored in the cost of propane, that priced out to, oh, maybe a buck a mosquito. Shoulda just paid my boys a bounty. It'd have been more effective. I thought about seeing if I could find a surplus M65 Nuclear Rifle, which would certainly have done the trick. But even in Virginia, those can be hard to come by. Plus, they aren't so great for property values. Since that effort failed, I've been on the defensive. I've cleared out gutters compulsively. I've lit citronella candles. I've slathered on the DEET. The yard still belongs to them.

Today, though, I'm trying a new tactic. Give them what they think they want. I've got an old sandbox in the back which has become a small pond of rather organically fragrant water. It's shaded and still, the sort of habitat that would look just about perfect to mosquito mamas. Rather than dump it out this year, I've left it...but with a little extra. That tempting stagnant water is now laced with an organic larvicide, a bacteria that is both targeted at and lethal to the little larval squigglers.

I'm creating, in essence, a Nursery of Death for my bloodsucking friends. They'll follow the clear trail of water vapor evaporating from the largest source of water in the yard. They'll lay their eggs. Then. They. Will. Die. I find if I say this while sounding like Emperor Palpatine, it's doubly satisfying.

As a basically compassionate person, and one for whom compassion extends into realm of many non-human critters, I occasionally pause and wonder if this is perhaps a bit..ah...bloodthirsty of me. But then I remember the itchy little squirrels and bitten chipmunks. I remember the crows that used to inhabit our neighborhood, but were annihilated by the West Nile Virus borne by the aedes albopictus. And I think to myself...sometimes, a pest is just a pest. It isn't a vessel for the divine. It isn't a marvelous example of God's providence. It shouldn't make you want to sing..MwaaaaaHaaa Haaayaaah, or whatever it is they sing at the beginning of the Lion King.

It's something that bites you. Taking them down is just fine.