Well, all I know is just what I read in the papers.  Just the other day a fellow in Atlantic City, New Jersey come through with some statistics that really ought to set us all thinking. 

            This was Thomas J. Headlee, Dr. Professor and Chief “Entomologist.”   He delivered this address at a convention of the New Jersey Exterminators Association duly assembled in the very heart of the mosquito belt. 

            Well, during the scratching and slapping and singing of the mosquitoes at this dinner, Mr. Headlee read off the following authoritative statistics.

            “The normal productivity of one lone female house mosquito in one year is 159,785,000,000 offspring.”

            You mothers that think you have done something when you have brought into the world two to 8 or 10 young hyenas, you certainly can’t boast after reading what the female mosquito has done to leave her imprint on the ankles of humanity. 

            You ain’t heard nothing yet.  “Only half of these, or 79,937,500,000 should be counted as pests, for they are the active, buzzing, biting, and egg laying females.  The others are mere males which do not bite and are harmless.  These figures, which are based on the known rate of mosquito reproduction and which disregard infantile mortality, indicate the urgent need for control measures that begin early in the season.”

            Now, women, what have you got to say for yourselves?  Get that, the males are harmless, they don’t bite, buzz or lay eggs.  That’s great.  It makes me proud I am a male. 

            Now we are getting down to the “nubbin” or main part and like all speakers he didn’t explain that.  It is this.  He told you to “go out and exterminate a female as early in life as possible.”  But he didn’t tell you how to distinguish the female from the male.  You are liable to go out with the best intentions in the world and kill one, and what might it turn out to be but an innocent male.  A poor male mosquito, that had never done a soul a wrong in its life.  It had never sung to you, it had never bit you, it had never laid eggs on you.  In fact it had gone through life acting in a gentlemanly way, and here it is killed.  Why?  Because you haven’t been taught to distinguish the sex.  He has given up his life, this poor mosquito has, a martyr to the ignorance of the human race.

            What we need is literature of two kinds.  One to teach us readily to realize the sex, and the other is pamphlets for the female mosquitoes on birth control.  Show them that they are not only doing their part but they are going over their quota.  Teach them that the days of the big families in mosquitoes are past, that what we want is “Fewer and better mosquitoes.” 

            Don’t try to kill off the females.  Educate ‘em up to modern ways.  They are not so crazy about laying eggs, it’s just because they think it’s their duty to do it.  Course the whole thing is kinder mysterious to me.  I don’t see how the female can be the one that lays all the eggs, raises all the young, does all the biting, and still has time to sing.  Now, some of these must kind of overlap.  They can’t bite and sing at the same time.  We know that from experience. 

            Now, when do they find time to raise all these children?  There must be times when they can’t be singing or biting.  The way this entomologist has left us now about the only way we have left open to do is watch a mosquito till he bites you and then destroy him.  (I mean her.)  In other words, if he bites you he is a her, and if he sings, he is a her.  Watch him and see if he lays an egg, then it’s a her.

            But if he just sits about all day and don’t do anything, why about the only conclusion we can come to is that it is a HE.  Don’t kill him, he does no harm, he just sits and revels in the accomplishments of his wife.  So when you find a male the best thing to do is just to sit there and wait till his wife comes between bites.  “How does the male live?”  That’s what they’re

going to take up at the next dinner.

Excerpted from article published February 24, 1929.