Mosquito Hawk Down!

They're everywhere!

They're in the bedroom. They're in the bathroom. They're in the kitchen. They're in the livingroom. They're outside bouncing along the driveway and beating against the porch light. We're inundated by mosquito hawks!

Big and slow, sometimes about 2 inches long or wide, these unfortunately misnamed, "mosquito hawks," a.k.a. Crane flies actually don't eat mosquitoes. They don't eat much of anything, really. What they do do, however, is magically appear when you least expect them and hover randomly just at the corner of your peripheral vision, giving you the screaming heebie-jeebies when you first notice the sudden bumbling motion. And though they are silent (if erratic) in open flight, when they get up against a wall, say for example, the one directly over the headboard of your bed, they bump, bump, bump, and flutter, flutter, flutter until you scream in frustration and throw off your covers and storm from the room. Last night Stacy was convinced we had rats in our walls until I turned on the light to reveal the true culprits.


I'm not sure why I'm somewhat adverse to killing them. They're kinda gross. Kinda like dumb spiders with wings. They give you the cardio-creeps when they float past you from behind, perhaps brushing a cheek that you are then immediately ready to claw off with your own fingernails. But there's a misfit cuteness about them too. I can relate -- perhaps it's some kind of quasi-spiritual bond, one physically non-sensical creature to another. We are oddly and humorously made. Maybe it's that existential kinship that's drawing them. At any rate, I'm about ready for our little insectoid invaders to thump-bump their way to somebody else's house.