mosquito

Mosquitoes are pesky creatures, I thought, as I regarded one, bumping along my mosquito net looking for a hole to sneak in through. Pesky, I repeated, and got back to the book I'd taken to bed last night. Till, five minutes later, a sharp prick told me mosquitoes are not only pesky but also pernicious.

Mosquito comes from the Latin word for 'fly', musca - originally a 'tiny sand-fly'. Musca became the Spanish mosca, whose diminutive form reached English as mosquito - etymologically 'a small fly'. - (from Bloomsbury dictionary of Word Origins, John Ayto)

There are two ways that I could deal with these mosquitoes:

• Be inside the mosquito net, a 4 X 6 X 5' space, and hope none sneak in. It's like putting up a boundary wall or fence around your house and going to sleep, in the hope you've kept invaders out - inavders that sneak in, anyway, and drain the blood out of you, one drop at a time.


• Plug the mosquito repellant into the wall socket and switch it on, so all mosquitoes within the room die. It's like hunting down all red-book thumping, armed bloodsuckers who've infiltrated your house and are now looking for domicile status and, bolstered by support from bleeding-heart liberals, education for their kids.

Me, I chose to kill.

Up next: pernicious