Can a mosquito mosquito? (The birth of the verb ‘to mosquito’)

A fly can fly but a mosquito cannot mosquito? Read on.

A week back I was about to stun a mosquito.

‘Spare me. I’ll give you an interview’, it pleaded.

Overcoming my surprise, I asked,

‘How do you find us, Mr.…?’

‘I am a womosquito’ she said sternly.

‘Beg your pardon’ I apologized.

‘We womosquitos are ill fated like your women. Human blood is our ordained food. But we seem to bring out the killer in you. You are all killers. You choose different methods. Clinical killers stun and then kill. Some gory killers smash and nonchalantly wipe off the blood on their hands. Some are devious. They soap their hands and then catch us’ the mosquito said.

‘Very bad’ I said to humor her.

‘Don’t be smug! I know you. You clutter your room and invite us but keep cobwebs to entrap us. I have seen you catch my best friend and feed her to the spider’ she said.

‘Sorry. I’ll make amends. I will post your viewpoint in Blogger. The world shall know you’, I said.

After the Blog posting was done, the mosquito met me once more.

‘You’ve done us in. Now mosquito has become an abuse. To mosquito now means to inflict a mosquito story on somebody’ she wailed.

‘But you mosquitoed me before I mosquitoed others’ I said.

The enraged lady then bit me and stuck herself to a drop of amber.

She had the last laugh as after a billion years, when dinosaurs had retaken the earth, a dinosaur scientist found my blood in her and made a whole population of my clones to keep for pets.

Swami Sampurnananda, 26 October 2003