With Jean Ponzi
Monarchs and Mosquitoes
An Ode to Person-Power
and Eco-Choice
Your Pollinator Garden
Is a banquet for the Bees
And the Milkweeds you have planted
Flag in Monarchs off the breeze
Wild flowers, like stars, are blazing
Wafting scents and beaming hues
To attract the winged critters –
Eco-logical yoo-hoos!
Your relationships in Nature
Are a growing source of glee
As the biosphere around you
Pulses with diversity.
But a group of flying ladies
By the Latin name of ‘Aedes”
Who might seem to come from Hades
Threatens to undo your spree.
I’m referring to Mosquitos!
When these mamas take a meal
They can leave you with a virus –
A concern that’s sadly real.
When we humans start to worry
About bugs who spread disease
We forget they’re part of nature too –
Our Eco-Senses tend to freeze.
We call out the bug-foggers,
Trucks that spray out poison brew;
We forget this stuff kills every bug
It touches: Monarchs too!
Let us not forsake that Eco-Sense!
Belay those chemo-fixes!
We can help control the problem!
We can be Mosquito-breeding nixes!
For the truth about bug-spraying is:
It doesn’t harm the eggs,
Or retard the growth of larvae,
On their way to sprouting wings and legs.
Fogging-poison only kills
Adult Mosquitoes that it touches;
And spray pulls the plug on EVERY bug
That flutters through its airborne clutches.
Fogging for Mosquitoes breeds scenarios like these:
While your Damselflies and Dragonflies
And Solitary Bees
And your Milkweed-luring Monarchs
All are drop-dead falling from the trees
(And a few Mosquito mamas might be killed too,
In this seize)
Down below, in standing waters,
More Mosquito sons and daughters
Will keep living out their larval days,
Unharmed by all that Spray-Truck haze,
Till they pupate to adulthood,
Fly and bite you, lively as you please.
Don’t choose poison, use your Person-Power!
Control the source of dreaded pests:
Interrupt Mosquito-breeding
In their standing-water nests.
Find those stagnant-water havens
Where Mosquito larvae thrives.
Dumping water dumps the larvae –
And protects the Pollinator hives!
Play detective on your property:
Get out there after showers,
I.D. your standing-water spots
And dump them! Use your Eco-Powers!
Look for things like bucket-lids
Where even tiny pools remain,
Where Mosquito Moms can lay their eggs
And DO lay, many, after rain.
Get the hose and clean your gutters!
Fill the birdbath freshly every day!
You’re protecting them that flutters
When you find and flush larvae away.
Step out into your Neighborhood
And talk to other folk!
Join forces to stop breeding!
Help each other keep things Okey-Doke!
Sure, we could call the Spray-Trucks
To “protect” us from the biters
But that spray will also bite us
As it wipes out all the bug delighters.
If you love the Pollinators,
Moths and Bees and Butterflies,
Clean Mosquito breeding spaces up!
Protect both Bug and Human lives!
Jean Ponzi talks Eco-Sense in her Earthworms
podcasts, every week, from KDHX. Pick ‘em up at
Earthworms.kdhXtra.org or through iTunes.