Streetalk July 14 2005

What is the purpose of a mosquito?John: God created mosquitoes to test human beings’ self-control. When it’s biting you, you want to smash it, when actually you should flick it. If you flick the mosquito while he’s biting you, he’ll suck the poison right back out, and if you don’t scratch the bite, it will go away in an hour. But 99.9 percent of all people will smack it and then scratch the bite. Man doesn’t have any self-control.

Molly: Mosquitoes were God’s only mistake in creation. Everything else on this planet, even if they’re annoying - ants, bees, spiders - all serve another purpose, but mosquitoes serve no purpose. They just bite people and bite animals. I think when God had his test tubes, he was combining everything and maybe he was trying to make another spider but the wind blew wrong and something extra filled in there and we ended up with a mosquito.

Buck: It’s not for us to ask. Everything is God’s creation. Wreaking death is wreaking death. It doesn’t matter whether you nonchalantly murder a mosquito for bugging you or if you murder 30,000 Iraqis because they are on top of your oil. [Mosquitoes’] right to exist is just as important as mine, and it’s not really my place to decide whether they should go, even though I do kill them. I don’t lose sleep about it, but I know it will be counted against me in the final tally, just like if I were to kill a man or the deer I hunted as a teenager.