Dear Donkey,
Cow or no cow, our species is going to be around for many yugas of many aeons, that's for sure!
I am really a cute mosquito and I don't understand why I am an unpopular and unwelcome guy. It is petty and spiteful to vilify someone just for a drop of blood. Blood donation, if you please. Keep your pound of flesh; all I want is a drop of blood. I wonder if that tiny imperceptible prick gives us a bad reputation.
Mosquitoes and other blood-suckers are not bad creatures. Like queen larvae of the bee family, everyone has his own preferred diet. Male mosquitoes feed only on plant juices. That is really not my cup of tea. I, as a breeding female mosquito, need more than sugar. I need blood, as do leeches, fleas, ticks, bed bugs, lice and other vampire creatures of the world.
Quite unfair for some bats to be stuck with such a name!
According to European folklore, vampires were evil spirits of dead people that rose from graves every night to feed on the living. Movies show vampires as ghoulish creatures with long canine teeth, which actually is quite absurd. None of the bloodsucking creatures has sharp canines or is evil. Vampire bats are nocturnal mammals that land on some dozing animals, bite them and lap up the blood gushing out. No harm done to the animals; perhaps a little discomfort, eh? Though the same cannot be said of the chupacabra.
Chupacabra means “goat-sucker' in Spanish. It is a mysterious creature that attacks livestock at night in many countries of South America and Mexico. Is it real? A few people have seen it; yet no one is certain what it looks like. Some say it is lizard-like, spiny, three feet tall and hops like a kangaroo. Some others say it is hairless and dog-like. Does it exist? Who knows? The only thing for sure is dead animals with puncture wounds.
I often wonder why everyone dreads us. Could it be that they see us as ‘killers' like the chupacabras? I cannot deny that I am in an indirect way responsible for about three million human deaths every year. When I, an Anopheles female mosquito, bite a sick person, I take a drop of his infected blood. The malaria parasite present in it remains in my body. The next person I bite gets the parasite along with my saliva which I inject into him to prevent clotting, before sucking his blood. Now that you know how the dreadful disease is spread, do you still hold me responsible for this horrific problem? If you do, you are not being fair. I do not have blood on my hands.
Mzz A Mos
Reply from Aristotle
Your defence brief doesn't hold water, Mzz Mos. I think you are going to get slapped around just as hard if not harder after this pathetic letter gets published.
Add a species of birds, Darwin's finches of the Galapogos Islands to your list of sanguivores.
