THE BIG HUNT AND THE GREAT KILL

Mosquitoes, it is said, go to bed in the morning. I am not sure they go to bed at all. If they do, they must, in the morning; for the nights, they spend carousing on warm human blood, mine and thine. We know that they get intoxicated with it and sing and dance like mad. Insatiable, they come down again and again, for another and another pull at us, poor human bottles. Often they see our now almost desperate hands descending like lightining but then they escape as neatly as, as, as mosquitoes, of course! Still occasionally they are content like good epicureans to die drinking. And then we foolishly exult over our unmerited triumph.

That other friend of ours, the bed bug has never to go to bed at all, never having had to leave it. They don't have to hunt or fish for their food either. Their food obligingly goes to them like mothers, and lies down with them, contentedly to be sucked dry. Still we, nursing mothers, call it treachery, name them the strangest, 'cruellest' bed fellows.

Of course, we have reason to be distressed, and distraught. Our blood up we vow destruction and death for them, the first thing in the morning. Our bed-fellows hear our vows and with the wise lark, the mother of the young ones of the fable, laugh inwardly. 'When a man or a thing bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself or itself but when he or it laughs inwardly, it bodes no good for other people.' said Mark Twain. But nobody hears the laugh, and the rosy-fingered morn peeps in and our good bed-mates are safe. Who among us are resolute enough or vindictive enough to remember the night's resolutions or revolutions or revelations in the morning? We have not had the opportunity of sleeping over them either. With us fools, as with Macbeth, 'They should die, hereafter, tomorrow and tomorrow.' Or more philosophic than even that old murderer, we tell our-selves that when we kill bugs we are shedding our own innocent blood. We feed them and then we kill them. Why be destroyers and preservers at the same time?

But days of agony in our chairs, and nights of tossing anguish in our beds might at last make us spring out of bed shouting 'Today', woe to them indeed then!

It is a mighty chase now and a bloody hunt. Blood naturally will have blood. Boiling blood will not be content with anything less than buckets of it. The hue and cry raised, the mattress turned upside down, and the first blood drawn, it is a world war three, an allout war to the finish, even though it be a war of one against many, so many! Even in the thick of it is a hair-raising thing to see the things, the blood suckers in their thousands the Jungis Khan hordes scurrying in all directions. A single pair of hands aided by just one pair of eyes which have unfortunately only one sight between them, how can it deal with these crawling, Chinese millions, the hit and race cowards now on the run. Many escape. It is then that we find our hearts, our minds, even our bodies, on fire. There is a demon in us. The dirty scum that specialise in the stab in the back now get their due.
But even in their death they plague us. All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten our little hands even if our 'crime' be only the murder of a single villainous bug. Such stench never human nostrils have breathed. Murder even of foul enemies, is murder still and will stink. The whole room, the whole world, will stink' who knows how long

No not for that long. Not even for a week perhaps The pall-bearers are arriving, I mean the ants. Can man ever take part in or ever witness such an august and solemn funeral procession as follows. At the head and then at regular intervals are the bearers, holding the venerable dead shoulder high. In between, and for a long distance behind are the mourners, silent and sad. Moving up and down on either side of the procession are the junior officer busy-bodies apparently doing a lot because they have actually to do nothing. Where is the procession heading? When is the last post to be sounded? Who cares whether they are buried in ant-bellies or worm-bellies?

It is true some of these undertakers, in their zeal, carry away to their graves bodies that are still not quite dead. Much might, much must, be excused in a clean and disciplined race which in spite of occasional excesses, is easily the most efficient of the world's sanitary staff. Haste and sincerity, let us remember, can and will never be divorced. And sincerity covers a multitude of sins.