Another thing

I was trying not to itch a mosquito bite under my waistband, exactly where the metal back of the fastener was. It was horridly irritating and uncomfortable, and in a position where the antihistamine cream I’d applied soon rubbed off.  Annoying and painful, I tried to remember how lucky I was that there was only one bite, the mosquitoes here don’t carry disease, and really my little irritation was nothing compared to what others suffer.

I remarked to my daughter that I couldn’t imagine what the point of mosquitoes is. Ants can be a bit of a pest, but they eat greenfly, they help aerate the soil and according to https://www.finegardening.com/ they are “part of the world recycling crew: acting as scavengers, collecting dead insects and turning them into fertiliser for your soil.” Rats? Eat rubbish and pests – ok, maybe they don’t always know what is rubbish and eat the wrong things, and maybe in the wrong place they are pests – but out in the wild they have their place. But mosquitoes – what is the point of mosquitoes apart from biting mammals, sometimes spreading disease, and causing itchy bumps.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine –

While they can seem pointless and purely irritating to us humans, mosquitoes do play a substantial role in the ecosystem. Mosquitoes form an important source of biomass in the food chain—serving as food for fish as larvae and for birds, bats and frogs as adult flies—and some species are important pollinators.

So, apparently they play an important part in the ecosystem, but couldn’t they do that without biting me? I’m being facetious of course, and having a few itchy bites is nothing really, and they do give fair warning of incoming with their irritating buzz… which is another thing, their really irritating buzz…

My featured image is of a pool in an Irish garden, beautiful, and I bet mosquitoes love it  – so maybe the goldfish which live there love the mosquitoes back!