Cloudy With a Chance of Mosquito Hawks

L & N: Mosquito hawk hunters extraordinaire

Had another run in with Crane flies this morning. I was up in those wonderful, savory, dark, early-morning hours, propped up in a well-stuffed chair, hot mug of Irish Breakfast tea in one hand, a Terry Pratchett novel in another - blissful abandonment of the world - or at least a deferment for an hour or two. Fully engrossed in the book, I was snapped out of my neonatal bliss when the corner of my eye recorded something shoot across the carpet next to my chair at a very high rate of speed. "Mouse or very, very large spider" was what those most primitive fight-or-flight nerve paths flashed instantly to my brain, leaving all thoughtful cognitive reasoning in the neurological dust. Eventually the reason train pulled languidly into the brain station and calmly reminded me that 1) mice generally don't hang out next to you when you are in a room, and 2) that would have to be a spider sprinter of Olympic caliber to blaze across the carpet like that. The less Neanderthal levels of my brain submitted a tasking order to legs to get down off the arm of the chair that I had inexplicably found myself standing on, and to my eyes to schedule some visual reconnaissance.
It took a while to get the focus right, but I soon discovered the source of my flighty apparition - "flighty" indeed being the operative word. Bumbling around the room was one of our old friends, a mosquito hawk. While engrossed in my book he had flown bumblingly by at shoulder level and to an eye not ready to deal with things requiring depth perception, seemed to race across the carpet by my chair. An unlikely fan of mosquito hawks I settled back down in my tea-soaked chair and let the adrenaline dissipate while I rejoined the less ridiculous story line in the Pratchett book.

An hour or two later I received the company I usually get on sleepy Saturday mornings. N curled up under the blanket I had stretched over my legs and L bounced around the room, bustling about, poking and prodding at it as if she had never been there before and it was all new and unexpected. L kind of reminds me of a bumbling mosquito hawk sometimes. A very large, substantial mosquito hawk - you really know it when she blunders into you. It didn't take long before my first born mosquito hawk identified this morning's version.

"Ahhhhhh!" she screamed and immediately ran over to the sliding patio door, flinging it open wide.

"L, it's just a mosquito hawk. They don't hurt you," I said.

"It's probably scared," she said, recovering herself somewhat. "I'm only letting it out!" But the tone of her voice indicated that she was not likely doing it purely for the sake of the insect's delicate nerves.

"All you're letting out by standing there fanning your arms is the well-heated air that I was basking in. Please shut the door."

L closed the door and N, roused from his undercover operations, joined L in following the mosquito hawk in its meandering path about the room. "We can keep it as a pet!" he suggested.

"We already have Mitt," reminded L, referring to our election-year acquisition of a pet newt.

"That's OK. We can keep it." N is all love and charity. "What should we call it?"

L thought for a moment and then it was clear she had an answer.

Quick tangent: I have discovered, probably not being the first person to do so, that there is a fundamental principle at work in the universe. You may know either what a child is going to say, but not when, so it hangs like the sword of Damocles over your head (e.g. "I caught Daddy using up all of Mommy's bubble bath last night!"). Or you may know when a child is going to say something but not exactly what (e.g. when the lady with the particularly big, prominent, hairy mole on the end of her nose sits down next to you in a waiting room). It is impossible to ever know both what a child is going to say and when she's going to say it. I call it the Humiliation Uncertainty Principle. Fortunately it is not always humiliating. Sometimes it's just odd.

"What should we call it?" asked N.

L thought for a moment and then it was clear she had an answer.

"I know," she said, as she gathered all her vast quantities of randomness unto herself. "We'll call him Meatballs!"

Mitt and Meatballs, welcome to the Perkins family menagerie!