Did you know that only female mosquitoes suck blood?

She bites to suck your blood!
When she bites. We smack and then scratch.

If she dodged your attempt to squish her, (and they usually do), please realize - her course was with purpose. She needed your blood to feed the larvae, often as many as 300, deposited in a yucky swamp area where it all began.

How did it all begin? With the male of course, driven by the force to reproduce. He grabs her with very little foreplay, then goes on to the next.

Meanwhile, she recovers from this arduous affair and seeks survival for the offspring, now deposited as tiny eggs or larvae. They need this blood meal to provide protein and successful growth. She needs this little transfusion to sustain herself.

He hides out amongst the flowers innocently extracting nectar. He doesn't need the blood to survive, just the energy to complete his efforts in this circle of life. Some things just never change!

Unfortunately, in her needy predicament she is spreading havoc in the infectious disease department. She has gathered blood from animals, the child down the block and now you. She's a time bomb buzzing around, and now, I am quite serious.

In a tropical setting, such as Florida in the summertime, mosquitoes carry serious health problems to horses (equine encephalitis), a severe brain infection causing the staggers' and eventually death. Heartworm in dogs is so prevalent that a routine preventative is necessary.

I'm sure Disney could make this all happen and come out cutesy in the end, but in all honesty, folks it's survival of the fittest. Do we really need mama mosquitoes sucking our blood to nourish the eggs that will evolve in about two-weeks? Oh boy, 300 more fledglings needing nectar and our blood. Ants are hard workers; they deserve to be a movie. Bees pollinate and make the world beautiful. Disney can do a lot with singing and swaying flowers. I realize that mosquitoes figure in the food chain of life, let the frogs like them!

The female mosquito is not particular about our human smells either. She is attracted to sweat. She buzzes equally well for a different cologne or after-shave. You can't stink and you can't smell nice, I don't know what else to tell you.

If you are serious about dodging the female of the species and you have time to discriminate before you slap, she is the larger of the two, he's the little guy being quite harmless or is he?

Learn more about this author, Carole Borthwick.
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