December 6, 2023 | Rome, Italy

Anterior Half

By |2018-03-21T18:24:47+01:00May 13th, 2007|Area 51|
Two of them, the two that represent the first generation, the Adam and the Eve, increase to 258 by the third generation.
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laughter is thrilling. The urge, that is. Eat vegetables. Keep pets. Maintain a low profile. It changes nothing.

When you need to break down heterozygous resistance into homozygous and lack carbamates or pyrethroids — the process is called zygote weakening — try boiling water. Tin snaps to like a medieval soldier. A reeking kettle is its own incentive.

You can’t control the feet of birds, the filth they touch, but you can murder their stowaways.

By the thousands. Or flatter yourself: By the millions.

Forget the pope. Ignore Zyklon B’s pungent legacy. That history doesn’t speak to you. Nor does the European red mite. You didn’t make them. Never ordered them. But the tables (required reading) speak for themselves. Look at no. 7.

Two of them, the two that represent the first generation, the Adam and the Eve, increase to 258 by the third generation. Not alarming in an oil field, but what about a balcony? And you’re right to loathe intruders: Who invited them? It’s always trouble.

Look at table 4, the fifth generation. That’s 215,000. By the sixth it’s 5,009,320. The reporting station can’t even cope with the seventh. The number is: 23,376,682.

Million.

Two choices now, surrender or genocide. History has a track record: war, extermination, excuses. Look at the bright side: Genocide tranquilizes anxiety. It’s pre-emptively humane. Who knows what’s what? For cancer, tissue is the disease. It’s all about agenda. Cut the naïve act.

Consider the European red mite. Here is what’s written:

“The newly hatched larva is lemon-yellow to light orange, but after feeding it becomes darker, changing more or less to a reddish brown, depending on the quantity of chlorophyll it has taken with its food. The cephalothorax and the legs and palpi remain largely semi-transparent.”

You face a fast-moving cephalothorax that will soon sprout dorsal bristles. That’s a million palpi attached to shifty abdomen. Apples, basil, pears, plums, sage, they’re all at risk. Your edibles, trembling. Do you appease? Do you make polite conversation while the invaders breed?

Pay attention to the addendum, which I’ve circled:

“In climates where the European red mite undergoes roughly eight generations a year, it has been estimated that the progeny of a single pair of mites would by the end of the season amount to 300,812,500 individuals. This is a hypothetical figure and never is met in nature.”

Hypothetical? Maybe. But what if there’s heavy egg carryover — this is the sexual vernacular of entomologists. Females get inexplicably eager on hot days. “The male deutonymph,” says the report, “is smaller and more slender than the female.” Smaller and more slender: euphemisms — the male mite’s a sucker. The female prevails. She can meet the hypothetical. Surpass it.

Then there’s the matter of mating itself, which you might not want to read. See table 9. “The male settles down beside the deutonymph to await the emergence of the female. As soon as the nymphal skin of the latter splits across the back, the male begins working at the posterior half of it with his forelegs and mouthparts. The female then backs out of the anterior half of the old skin and copulation takes place immediately. The male crawls under the female from the rear. The female elevates the tip of her abdomen, and the male claps his front legs about her abdomen and his second pair of legs about her hind legs, then curves the end of his abdomen upward and forward until it meets the end of the female’s abdomen. The pair remain in this position for 10 or 15 minutes.”

Ten or 15 minutes of this. Forelegs and mouthparts.

Creatures work to survive, this is true, but Catholic, Jew or Muslim — none of them does this. Crawling first, then clapping an abdomen.

This is why you prepare response. Take a moment if you must. Sit with others and discuss obliteration. Weaklings will wince. Some will tell you to wait for carbamates or pyrethroids; “they’re painless.” Chemicals make the end seem more like sleep.

But does a mite know any better?

And what about your needs?

No, don’t play down thrill. It’s incendiary. Ask a shrink or a politician. Or an anthropologist. Ask those who watch. Thrill makes for Auschwitz and Rwanda. Or Kosovo. Or abortion. People thrill themselves to death.

So distract yourself away from inaction. Do, don’t watch.

Boil the water. Use several kettles at once, even a large pot. Then, find the communities, the places they emerge from. Cracks are a good start.

Then pour and pour. Boil more and repeat. Watch the steam for cadavers, bloodstains in a thermal stream.

Final advice: When you scald yourself, and you will, ignore it and move on.

About the Author:

Christopher P. Winner is a veteran American journalist and essayist who was born in Paris in 1953 and has lived in Europe for more than 30 years.