Spawning Wrigglers

Some of our friends are currently raising monarch butterflies from egg to caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly; others are raising tadpoles. Us? We're spawning mosquito larvae.

We'd often warned Bridger about leaving standing water in some of the big buckets in our back yard and told him that mosquitoes might lay eggs in it. I wasn't really sure I believed they actually would, but it was a good parents' cautionary tale. Apparently, he left some water in a big bucket while we were in Montana. When we got back, Brian and Bridger noticed that there were some wiggly little creatures using the water for a swimming hole. They put one under our microscope, and lo and behold, we realized we had spawned our very own mosquito larvae!

I was both fascinated and repelled when I got a good look at the critters, both under magnification and with the naked eye. When we looked them up online, we found out that mosquito larvae are commonly called wigglers or wrigglers, and I could see why, watching them scootch around their makeshift pond, with their hindquarters wagging back and forth to make little L shapes as they moved. (If I'm remembering correctly, they weren't much bigger than the L right here on this post.)

I thought we should get rid of most of them, but scoop out a few for further observation--we probably would have mosquito pupae within a few days! Oh the joy! But Brian opted to up-end the whole bucket on the lawn, thus ending our wriggler-spawning adventure. We did learn some interesting things from the whole experience, like the fact that only female mosquitoes suck blood; males sip nectar from flowers. It may have been some comfort to Cassidy to know that the many Montana mosquitoes who left her with red welts all over her body were girls just like her, though then again, maybe not.

I have to admit it was seriously gratifying to have one of my parental prognostications come so vividly, accurately true. Gratifying, too, to find out that leaving stagnant water out in the yard could lead to such a memorable learning experience.