Small Weapons, Tiny Killers

For nearly a week, across 700 miles, Gambusia affinis rode cocooned in a water bottle, squeezed tight into my Ford Escape's cup-holder.  I'd stumbled on a strategy to kill, provided no one got thirsty.

Gambusia are also called mosquito fish. They eat mosquito larvae. Each day, they eat about 10 times their weight in larvae.

My mosquito fish originated in Georgia's Phinizy Swamp outside Augusta. Oscar Flite, senior scientist at the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy, scooped my pair from an aquarium where the fish flitted back and forth to avoid the net and the turtle. Another name for mosquito fish is "turtle food."

The academy nets mosquito fish from the swamp and gives them to Richmond County mosquito control to place in pools with bad owners. Another name for bad owners is "out of state mortgage companies that don't give a damn about pools at foreclosed homes."

Turns out that abandoned swimming pools turn into cesspools of algae, slime, weeds, trees and habitat for mosquitoes to breed. If an eviction is bitter, or a marriage sours, pools can also sprout TV satellite dishes and couches. One backyard swimming pool can churn out 500,000 mosquitoes. About half of those will be female. It's the female mosquito that bites.

One bite does not a killer make, unless that lady mosquito is one of the deadly ones transmitting the West Nile virus, eastern equine encephalitis, dengue fever or yellow fever. These devastating diseases rarely rear their ugly head in the U.S. That's because mosquitoes, including those in putrid pools, are kept at bay as much as possible. And while most people don't die when they contract these diseases, some do die and others are never made whole again.

My Gambusia are special. I was the first to ever ask the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy for a take-home pair. I wanted to watch them, to observe their one-half inch of eating enthusiasm for mosquitoes. I struggled to keep them alive. They're small--about one-half inch, and nothing like being told not to drink the water, makes you want to drink the water.

My fish made it home. Now they swim in a large wide-mouthed jar on my bedside table, observed by Cracker the cat. I am hoping the fish will breed and I will notice the hatch before the pair eat their young. That happens, too.

Once they survive a month, I'll name them. This summer, I will find a pool that needs fish. Though Cracker suggests a new collective name Cat Food. The mosquitoes would thank him. I would return to Phinizy Swamp with my water bottle ready to fill.