BEASTLY TALES

GNATS ETC

We’re blessed with miniature humming birds,
Hovering with wing beats, too fast for words,
But they’re not after nectar or pollen,
Rather legs and ankles, leaving them swollen.
They are known, and I am so appalled,
Mossies, mosquitoes, they are also called.
Now where true humming birds are a thing of beauty,
Mosquitoes make life a misery, failing in duty.
Most unbeautiful, in the true sense of the word.
Loving mosquitoes would be something absurd.

Marty Muckall lived in a swamp,
Full of all manner of things that bite and chomp.
His favourite thing, no ceremony or pomp,
Was to say, “If’n the ‘skeeters don’ get you, the ‘gators will!”
Such should be written on the ten dollar bill.
For Muckall lived in the Florida Everglades,
Surviving on what he got from Indian trades.
He’d seen, from the sky, an aeroplane fall,
He’d seen a Boa Constrictor, the biggest of all,
No doubt released into the Everglades swamp,
When some brat’s fingers it started to chomp.
All sorts of pets, mostly exotic,
Abandoned in the swamp, in a manner most Gothic.

But back now to those biting gnats,
Eaten on the wing by swallows and bats.
Certainly what is needed are more bats to swallow,
Murderous swarms of mossies, if you follow.
Marty Muckall kept a camp fire burning.
Not for warmth, or cooking, or anything discerning.
But to provide smoke to keep mossies at bay,
All through the night, all through the day.

Mosquitoes in the Americas far north,
Emerge from snow when Spring bursts forth.
They are much larger than their southern cousins,
Producing a plague of thousands of dozens.
They drive Elk and Moose mad with their attacks,
Voraciously dive bombing fronts and backs.
One can only ponder the underlying point,
Of having such miserable things to disappoint.
Whereas the vast majority of earth’s creation,
Sings out it’s beauty, with no abation,
Biting insects are certainly included not,
Especially as you scratch that itching spot.
We haven’t even mentioned disease,
That can be transmitted by mossies and fleas.
Ticks are a most disgusting parasite,
Killing their host with a venomous bite,
The list could get ever so much longer,
Perhaps less so, if one resided on Tonga,
A paradise island in the Pacific Ocean,
Conjuring up a more benign notion?