By Mother Nature

Sometime early on April 27…

Crawling along a warm surface, weaving amongst the forest of red hairs, Pediculus capitis is totally unaware of what goes on in the greater world around him.  His world is hair, and lots of it.  He does not see the face of the woman whose head he lives upon, nor does he know of the intense game she is playing.  Unknown to this tiny insect, she sits upon a chair in a dim corner.  If this small creature could hear as more complex organisms can, he would appreciate the silence the woman sits in.  He extends his mouth and pierces her scalp, sucking briefly of her warm, nutrient-laden blood.  He then crawls along a coarse strand of hair, away from her scalp, when suddenly his world is flooded with light, and all around him the head of the woman appears to be in flame.  The light is painful for our little Anopluran friend, and so he buries himself deeper into her dense locks.  As he does, the louse does not hear the woman say, “Well Ray, you have just been asking too many questions for your own good.”  It is just as well, for a head louse has no need for words.

Sometime in the evening of June 2…

Bright colors and delectable smells draw the Vespula pensylvanica through a bustling crowd in search of snacks.  It pays little attention to the crowds milling about an object that looks like the Swiss cheese it likes; although, as a simple yellow jacket, it knows it not by name.  Instead, it knows that indeed it is not that precious substance it would happily devour.

Something extremely sweet catches its senses.  It lands on the edge of a glass that one of these huge creatures holds and slowly walks towards the aroma within.  A loud shriek pierces the ears of the others around our black and yellow friend; it only serves as a warning to the vespid, and it flies off.  It spies in the corner a table that is unattended by the large beings; humans, it would know if it had a brain capable of understanding classification, but alas, it does not.  It crawls along the food-laden table noshing on delectables: sliced fruits whose sweetness alone would be worth the wasp’s efforts, but laden in sugar, they are even better.  Cheeses, some sliced thin – including his favorite Swiss – and others soft and melty with odors so strong that they overpower our friend.

A soft, meaty substance that you might recognize as pâté catches the yellow jacket’s eye.  He rises in the air for a little reconnaissance, and he spies a table in another corner laden with meats – AH!  The thoughtless hymenopteran thinks to himself: fats.  It knows not fats, for it is just an insect with no ability to think, but fats are something the wasp will love.

Standing over the meats is a group of men.  You’d recognize these men… and a boy.  You’ve seen them fight before, but the wasp just floats amongst them on its way to the meat and… FAT.

“What are you talking about?” would be one thing he’d understand if he had the ability.  “There’s no way you own a piece!” was another.

A thinly-sliced pork for our friend the yellow jacket!  It crawls over it and carefully bites off small bits with its precise mouthparts.  The wasp lifts off towards the men, and one who looks too old to be alive, and certainly smells of death, attracts the vespid, but it is swatted by this older man as the words, “It was John’s deal with Penny,” floats through the air.  The wasp does not understand human emotion, but he does sense animal rage, and it’s overpoweringly strong within this group.  He spots the glass the old man has and is attracted to the sweet odor, and as it lifts itself to move towards the glass he hears but certainly does not understand (it is, after all, just a wasp) a voice say, “This is unacceptable.  This will change.”  The glass and its contents – we’d know it as a chardonnay – calls the wasp, and as it lights on its edge, it is sent somersaulting through the air.  The old man flicks him off as he speaks words heard by a small group of men, a boy and an ignorant wasp whose night in the art gallery has come to an end: “It’s not your decision now; it’s Penny Flame’s.”

Sometime in early August…

Dusk.  The favorite time of day for the Culex pipiens.  The quiet, stealthy parasite slowly buzzes towards the small group of mammals whose high carbon dioxide output has drawn her across the polluted canal and into the filthy apartment.  The mosquito sees a woman sitting on a chair, her deep, long red hair hanging around her face, a cigarette hanging from her lips.  Perfect, thinks the mosquito, for this woman smells like food.  Silently flittering overhead, our friend pauses on the head of an older man, partly balding amongst his tight, curly hair.  The insect’s long, needle-like proboscis probes his baldness painlessly and feeds for a moment as the man speaks words that are lost to the pest, but you’d understand as, “And in exchange, you want…?”  His scalp twitches, and with that the mosquito lifts off for another host as the man’s hand reaches up to his now-empty scalp.

The man sits aside a low table that is covered with bottles of beer, some partially eaten sandwiches and more than one stack of paper.  If we could place ourselves in the mosquito’s wings, there would be a word that would stand out above all others to us: Aurora.  The pest hovers over the table near the single light that shines upon it, soaking in the rich warmth it provides.  The rest of the room is dark, silent and smoky as the woman lights a second cigarette, but now the mosquito turns its focus on the older man, who is himself smoking a cigar.  He sits on the edge of his chair, the collar of his shirt open as he grabs a bottle and pours a small amount of a viscous fluid, much like the blood in his veins the mosquito will soon be drinking.  Mosquitoes have no alphabet, but when this pest looks at the bottle, the letters (which may as well have been Greek to it) spell Grappa to us.

The mosquito quietly lands on his collar and quickly follows it to his neck, where it, like trillions and trillions of mosquitoes past, punctures human skin.  The man takes a deep slug of his sweet liquid, puffs a hit from his cigar and swipes at his neck; but the mosquito is already gone and the man’s words drift to the mammalian ears in the room.  “The gyms.  She wants the gyms.”

These words were meaningless to the mosquito as it lit upon the coarse red hair of the third person in the room.  To this point, she has been content to smoke her cigarette and drink her beer.  As the small pest, the only other female in the room, crawled along her head to that spot below her brow line, the woman continued to puff the cigarette and swig the beer.  Slowly the mosquito’s mouth pierced her forehead and the feeding began.  She had eggs to feed and eggs to lay.  One last pull on her cigarette and then, with smoke coming from her nose: “Is that going to be a problem?”  The Culex continued to feed as the woman stood, grabbed what you’d recognize as a pen and scribbled onto one of the sheets of paper.  No ears – be they human or insectile – heard a response to her words, for there were none; just a shaking of the head of the balding, curly-haired man.  She dropped the pen and in one fluid motion quickly moved her hand and smacked her head, squashing the pest, who heard its last sounds in this life: “Well, good then.  I’m going to bed.  Are you joining me, Chris?”