Vivid POSTCARDS
Postcard from Alaska


by Toby Smith

There are 100 trillion mosquitoes in the world and most of them, it appears, reside here in big, beautiful Alaska. For a couple of weeks anyway. The lifespan of a mosquito is, after all, briefer than a Bucharest spring.

The state greeting of Alaska is not ‘Hello’ or ‘How’s it going?’ It’s Thwack.

The state bird of Alaska does not chirp or coo. It buzzes and whines.

The mosquitoes of Alaska are so tough they swat back.

I have prowled the Danube Delta in July, but the mosquitoes in that boggy marsh pale alongside the summer predators of America’s largest state.

Like many visitors to Alaska, I pitched a tent. What I really needed to do was fashion a nuclear bunker, for mosquitoes here laugh their way through nylon. Building a campfire helps some, but for the best protection you have to really get close to the fire. Like inside it. Insecticides? Insulting, say mosquitoes. Ditto for lotions, repellents, vaporizers, towelettes, netting, traps, snares and electrically charged wands with power plant voltage.

For best results, I recommend dynamite.

When a grizzly bear confronts you in Alaska, you’re supposed to talk to the bear quietly and calmly, and never run. If you quietly and calmly ask a mosquito, ‘Come here often?’ he’ll answer by swiftly decorating your ankle or neck with a cluster of welts. If you run, you must remember to close your mouth. One of life’s great discomforts, I have found, is a throat full of stingers.

Watching a swarm of mosquitoes chase after a grown man in Alaska is a lot like watching a 1950s science fiction movie. The man leaps into his car, then quickly slams and locks all the doors tightly. But the mosquitoes still manage to find a way in. The damn exhaust pipe! Waving his arms frantically as blood soaks the seat covers, the man screams, ‘They’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!’

If Hitchcock lived in Alaska, he would not have made The Birds. His movie would be The Bites.

You can find halibut tacos and sea otter salads here, but for Alaska’s mosquitoes human epidermis is the featured entrée. In truth, mosquitoes sup on anything. The other day I saw hungry mosquitoes bring a moose to its knees. I saw mosquitoes tip over a Winnebago. I saw them move a glacier. OK, it was a small glacier.

If you travel by canoe in Alaska, you don’t have to paddle. The mosquitoes do it for you. They latch onto your ears and simply tote you downstream.

Fittingly, mosquitoes in super size Alaska come in two species: twin engine and four-engine. Both models have flight attendants on board. Listen closely and you’ll like hear, ‘Coffee? Tea? West Nile virus?’

George W. Bush itches to bore for oil in a northern Alaska wildlife preserve. He wants to tear up pristine landscape so that obese American SUVs can have more gasoline on which to feast. A much better idea would be for Bush to visit Alaska - in person. Only then will he know what a real feast is.