Energy Conversion - A Mosquito

Mosquito and me, in the Little Rincon Mountains outside of Tucson, Arizona. You can see how the sheath of her mouthparts have flexed back out of the way, and how my blood is flowing up her stylet

Mosquitoes love me. They seem to come from miles around when I’m outside. Everyone else will be insect free, and I’ll have so many on mosquitoes on me that I look like I’m wearing a shaggy sweater made of insect legs.

But how cool they are, in spite of their unpleasant aspects. Tiny, flying devices for pumping a viscous, clotting liquid out of massive, bug-squashing objects such as us. I wonder if it takes bravery for them to feed on us.

After they spend much of their lives in the water, filter-feeding, they emerge as these spindly, flying pumps. All legs and wings and sensors and hunger.

How on earth do they know what to do? To pierce skin, drink until they’re bloated and filled, then fly away like lumbering, blood-filled Hindenburgs?

And then to miraculously transmogrify that stolen piece of me into more mosquitoes?

If you were to read about this world in a science fiction novel, it would seem far-fetched.