The Mentality of the Culicidae

It's 3am, and I'm awake. Again.

I used to be the type of person who would lie awake at night thinking about things. I have this goal of "understanding", so puzzling things out is a natural instinct. And hey, I used to have things to think about. The MUD, for instance. Why on earth did this player say that? Was that what he thought of me? Why would he think that, did they really think I was so selfish? How could I make them all see the person I really was? Et cetera. Or when I had a crush on a boy when I was fourteen, now, that really gave me something to think about. But that was long ago, and it's not why I'm awake tonight.

No, tonight there's a mosquito in my bedroom. Again.

Now, I like to think of myself as a nature-lover. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of visiting the Botanical Gardens with my family, being taught about the different trees and flowers, feeding the ducks. When I was lonely in primary school, there was a patch of buttercups far across the field from where everyone played, and I would retreat there when the age difference got too intrusive for me, and keep the bees company. And I like cute and cuddly animals as much as the next girl.

Actually, I've probably quite a bit more tolerance for the wildlife than your average person; too much David Attenborough as a teenager, I suppose. (No, you can never watch too much David Attenborough.) So, in accordance with his enthusiastic attitude, I find it all interesting, curious and worth preserving (although I haven't gone vegetarian). This means that I don't mind large spiders, because the big ones we get here are harmless; in a safe environment, I wouldn''t mind handling a snake. To me, ants' nests are a marvel of nature, as you can see in this video, although obviously they're best left alone. I like earthworms, in theory, although I've never bothered digging them up to go look at them. By a weird extension, I like colorectal surgery. (Seeing the patient's innards spread out on view... Pink and wriggly? Happy guts. Ooh, that bit looks sick, poor thing. Let's cut it out. The rest of them still happy? Happy guts.)

But well, mosquitoes are the lone exception. They spread malaria, causing a worldwide disease burden. Not to mention myriad other diseases. They don't support any ecosystem, as far as I know, because they're a pest feeding on humans and animals. They seek me and my mother and sister out preferentially, and we get huge welts that last for days and sting at night. I don't believe in "evil" in the malignant, people-hating sense, but ... mosquitoes are the enemy and must die.

Which brings us to The Hunt.

The door is closed. The lights are on. All wooden surfaces get checked. Then Smith gets covered in blankets up to his face, and my arms and head are free to act as bait ... and to smack them out of the air. I used to be reasonably good at it. When I was on rotation on the North Coast, in a house with broken fly-screens, I'd sit for an hour before bed and get about six or seven of them each night. Then I could sleep knowing that with the door shut, no more would come in.

These days, though ... I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm older and slower. Maybe I'm tired more often. Maybe the mosquitoes are faster, where we live now. But many hours over many nights have been fruitless, and I usually end up just putting a blindfold on and going to sleep with the lights on. I don't think I've caught a mosquito this year, and there have been plenty.

So I've had plenty of time to think about the intelligence of the mosquito. Obviously it's not on a par with the human mind. I must be some kind of animist, because I usually like to think of things as having a personality - trees, germs, guts (as above), supermarket trolleys, you name it. But well, I don't even like to dignify a mosquito by giving it its proper gender (only the female ones bite). No, this is not your average gravid female looking for nourishment for her eggs, and this is not a bitch-slap fest. It is an IT. Kill it.

There used to be a catchy television advertisement for insect spray, that featured an anthropomorphic, singing housefly. I'm Louie the fly, Louie the fly, straight from rubbish tip to you! Spreading disease, with the greatest of ease ... But when you're in a room with a mosquito ... well, it's not exactly a planning genius.

"Right, we go around the bedpost here and between the slats, and they'll be straight ahead. Ignore the golden-haired one, the Asian one has a better blood group, taste that carbon dioxide on her breath ... So we're going to zoom over the face, we don't want her to wake up, focus on the hands, arms, anything but the head, you got me? And do not, I repeat, DO NOT land on the hair - it's a trap. They're not called hair triggers for nothing. Okay, you ready?"

No, I like to think of a mosquito more as a machine. In its nervous system and what counts for a brain, it has, what, ten thousand neurones? A hundred thousand? I don't really have a clue, although I bet it's not in the billions. And there are probably only a few basic impulses - eat, mate, hide. Each one would have excitatory and inhibitory factors, and you can kind of predict what they are.

Anyone who's done neuroscience probably knows what I mean by that, but here's an analogy. Mating aside, let's say that 'hide' and 'feed' are at opposite ends of a dial. What the mosquito does depends on where the dial is at a particular time, and that depends on the environment. The time of day is one factor pushing the dial towards one end or another - feeding at dawn or dusk, and hiding the rest of the day. The presence of food pushes it towards feeding - I've just looked it up, and apparently carbon dioxide and oct-1-en-3-ol in breath and sweat are strong attractants. I used to watch them come up to me, mesmerised, tracking along the trail of my breath - conveniently, right in front of my face so I could smack them between my hands.

Obviously being swatted at is a fast swing towards the "life-preservation" end of the dial, but also, the presence of a good place to hide will attract it. I've learned that mosquitoes like to hide on dark wood-grain surfaces, and I used to be able to go hunt them down on my bedroom door or the bookshelf. (Now my bed is wooden and there's an underneath for them to hide. Grr.) And, to my despair, having the light on (so I can see it!) seems to be a strong push towards the 'go hide' end. Maybe having a 35 watt fluorescent for sewing and reading as the top light (100W incandescent equivalent) wasn't such a good idea.

Other than that, I'm guessing. I suspect that while light is a fast swing to the hiding end, darkness is only a slow push in the other direction. I wonder if the strength of the light is a factor in the speed. Sometimes I wonder if they're tempted to hide on my hair, being a dark, grainy surface. I haven't yet gone as far as digging out my tiny stash of acupuncture pins and opening a vein to attract it despite the light, but tonight I'm tempted. It did come out when I had a nosebleed earlier tonight, after all.

That only accounts for about fifty neurones in total, so obviously a mosquito is more complicated than that. But I've got a hundred billion ... I win, right? Well, that's what I'm hoping...

neeed ... sleeeep.....

Two sonnets

Well, we're off to Smith's mother's house for a couple of days, so here's a vanity post before I go.

A healer's sorrow

The angel hoped her healing powers could
help bring forth life. She ran to make her way
to where Savannah and Calarus stood.
But in the womb, the babe had torn away
and floated, dying, in life-giving blood.
No dreams of freedom from its foetal world
to elfdom, strengthened there in Ramblers' wood;
'stead flown to Stormy, while its mother curled
in pain.
To heal, her burden needed to be purged
so Bri, with mystic knowledge, from her body forced
contractions, freeing her, to let the bleeding cease.
And Jean stood by, near helpless, as the child emerged,
tears muffling her blessing o'er the still blue corpse.
Now, in the vale of Unicorns, it lies in peace.

A mixed blessing

Although her needlecraft displayed her taste
in shade and colour, Jean was unaware
that her distracted musings formed a prayer
which likewise shone in every stitch she placed.
She'd ached with young Savannah's loss, embraced
as hers the pain she'd seen the elves must bear;
and notions of Mariah's seeming air
of solitude had shaped each line she traced.

So as she sent her threaded needle sweeping
through cloth, so were her hopes for them expressed;
and while the work portrayed a kitten sleeping
on marble tiles, dreams stirred its gentle rest,
for as she sewed, her tapestry was steeping
in longing - or perhaps, the gift was blessed.

Merry Christmas!

the angel Jean - Smith's little elf

The origins of the angel Jean

Well, I've decided to tell two stories tonight, 'cos I probably won't post tomorrow. The second one's longer.

The first one is purely a vanity story.

--The origins of the angel Jean--

While I was just friends with my now dear husband Smith, he mentioned that he had recently been made a staff member at an online game. This game is a "multi-user dungeon" or MUD, a text-based roleplaying adventure game which could be accessed online via telnet.

Well, soon after we decided we were right for each other (which is another story for another time), he invited me to look at this game. The rest, as they say, is history, but hey, I feel like telling the story and I never really have.

Jean is not my real name. When he invited me to connect to the game, he checked to see if my real name was available as a username. It was. I duly connected to the game using my name, but he wasn't there when I did, so I started playing the game. I found it interesting, but involved, and eventually disconnected.

(Smith is not his real name either. It is his game username. I don't use real names online.)

As a coincidence, one of the other staff members had the same first name as I do. (I think Smith had found that out earlier, and did some snooping around to make sure we weren't really the same person. :P)

Anyway, the next time I decided to connect, I decided that since it was make-believe, I could use whatever name I wanted. I chose Pearl. Yes, Pearl the elf bard was my first real character on the Dead of Night mud and I played her for quite a while.

Once Smith had seen my character, he also made a character, and we played together whenever we were on. But, he was on a lot more than I was, and as I said he was a staff member and knew a lot about the game. Pretty soon his character was 50 levels above where Pearl was. :P

I met his online friends and enjoyed the game for the most part. But I did have one bad experience as Pearl. Because Smith's non-staff character was so much higher than mine, and because he liked to give me things, I soon amassed some equipment that I never would have obtained myself. One day a respected player (who would soon become a staff member) looked at me and accused me of multiplay - that is, making multiple characters and passing equipment from one to the other - which is considered cheating in that game. I was mortified.

A few months in, Smith decided that he no longer enjoyed being a staff member, and quit. He would log in his other character every so often and chat with people, but he no longer played with Pearl as much.

I didn't mind. Our real life relationship was getting stronger (and continues to do so to this day) and we were spending plenty of time together. But I still liked to play as Pearl. She did have a tendency to get hit on, however, which I didn't enjoy. I should have expected that, I guess that's one thing that did reinforce my prejudice of the community as being nerds.

One day I decided I was sick of it. I wanted a new character with different abilities. All I had to choose was the name. I chose Jean. It was plain and nobody would know if I was male or female. And after the multiplay scare, I resolved not to accept any help from ... anyone. I would do this by myself.

And I did. I have to say that I picked one of the most difficult combinations on that MUD :P Not deliberately, just out of ignorance. It was 3 years before I got to level 21 where you can choose your own title, so for 3 years I was 'Jean the elf'.

By then, I guess my personality and Jean's character had really come through. I chose a healer class because it fitted in with who I was. I had even begun to roleplay a little, and of course Smith came back (soon after I started playing Jean, even) and everyone knew I was his. Staff on the mud are given 'god' status (basically meaning they have powers others do not), so I played his little priestess. I also wanted a little humour and conflict in my character, so Jean was a naive and gauche little girl who said things without thinking. Jean was never very good at her healer class anyway, so that helped form the character.

I was very flattered when Smith was allowed to write a room description of his own and he dedicated it to me. This is what he wrote:

Slight, solid stainless steel skylight shows streaming sunlight.
Bathed below, beautiful baskets contain copious cooled fresh fruits from
far fields. Deep, dark desk draws dedicated attention at an actual
angel. Architected as alabaster, an angel appreciates an apple. Less
lovely lifeless, lifelike loses real revelation reality releases. An
angel achingly associates real resonant remembrances etching elven
existence, Jean.

(Yes, I am addicted to apples. One a day. Don't tell me it's ironic I'm a doctor.)

So when it came time to choose my title, I was definitely going to go with Angel Jean. Of course, Smith was the one to point out to me that it really should be the "the angel Jean". So online I have been known for ... wow ... five years now as the angel Jean - Smith's little elf.

I subsequently became a staff member myself (another story, although I have to say I earned it). And when you have to deal with players who want character and game changes from you, and you have no reason to work on them other than a desire to make them happy and the game a better place, you will get a lot of flattery. But I was touched by how many would tell me afterwards that I had truly earned the title in their minds. And call it self-aggrandisement, but I wouldn't have used the title if I hadn't thought I would deserve it. Jean is helpful and kind with never a nasty word to say about anyone, always ready with a listening ear, tries very hard not to show any favouritism, and is Always sincere.

I have drifted away from the Dead of Night. Staffing is a chore, and Smith would rather I spent my life on something tangible. And you can't flatter me by calling me an angel any more, although I might be bemused. But I can't yet let go of the angel Jean, and I try to continue to live by her high standards.

Hmm, story two will be another post.

the angel Jean - Smith's little elf