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The Queen's Mosquitoes
Part I / Fun Facts
Onomatopoeia
If you’ve ever heard a mosquito buzz in your ear, you know what “buzz” means as soon as you read it on the page. The word itself is spelled just like what your ear experiences.
There’s a word for this type of word. It’s called onomatopoeia. I know, it’s a mouthful. Which is ironic because onomatopoeia is supposed to simplify things by phonetically describing a sound. For example, it is hard to read the words oink, splash, bang or woof without hearing those sounds in your mind.
Pay closer attention to some of the words we use every day, and you might be surprised how often onomatopoeia applies to your vocabulary.
And if you want to learn how to pronounce onomatopoeia, see Activity 1.
Why Mosquitoes Buzz
But breezes gusted through the room
Blowing out the candle’s flame
So the mosquito went right back to
When you hear a mosquito buzz, you might think that it’s because the bug is close enough for you to detect its tiny little wings beating at a rapid pace. But more likely, you are listening in on a courtship ritual.
Male mosquitoes can’t see very well. So they listen for the sound of another mosquito’s wings. If the other mosquito is female, the two will work back and forth until their wing beats are in harmony. Then it’s party time.
If the other mosquito is a male, they’ll both try to dominate the symphony and their tones won’t converge, so they’ll move on.
The History of Fans
“Is that your plan?” the advisors laughed
But the Maid would have her say
“I’ll fan the air above the Queen’s head
Fans have been around forever. Early people likely used palm fronds and large leaves to keep cool and discourage flying pests.
Manually operated, handheld fans obviously came into fashion long before today’s electric or solar fans. Two basic types—the rigid and the folding fan—each had their reign. The rigid fan has a handle or stick and a rigid “leaf.” A folding fan entails two sticks (called guards) held together by a pin or rivet. A pleated leaf is mounted on the sticks, which allows the fan to open and close.
In Chinese and Japanese societies of old, both men and women carried fans. There were also special fans for various occasions. Immense care was taken to decorate these fans, which is why you can find many of these great works of art in world-renowned museums.
After hundreds of years of not knowing what they were missing, Europeans in the 1600s were finally introduced to the ornate, folding fans fancied by the Chinese and Japanese citizenry. At first, this fabulous invention was reserved for royalty and nobility. By Victorian times, English nobility were using fans to signal messages to potential suitors.
In the twentieth century before air conditioning became popular, handheld fans were a regular fixture in churches and funeral homes. These rigid fans had a wooden stick, a rigid cardboard leaf and advertising on each side. In fact, vintage funeral home fans are still collected by connoisseurs.
Part II / Fun Facts
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Sleep Deprivation
So she never got to sleep herself
Until one evening she nodded off
Missing a little sleep here and there is not terrible. But not sleeping for days is bad for your body. You only have to be awake for 17 hours before you start feeling the symptoms of a loss of sleep. You might experience drowsiness, irritability, poor judgment, memory problems, tremors and more. Sleep deprivation also changes your appetite and makes you crave foods that are bad for you, such as candy and potato chips. So people who have trouble sleeping may also have weight problems.
The longest (proven) time a person has gone without sleep is 11 days and 40 minutes. High-school student Randy Gardner set that record in 1964.
And according to the Center for Disease Control, Randy has good company. Because one out of three people do not get enough sleep per night.
But all is not lost. It’s possible to take extremely short naps with your eyes open and without losing your balance. These micro-sleeps can be as short as 30 seconds. But they can also leave you feeling confused and disoriented when you wake up.
So maybe it makes more sense to do all the right things to get a good night’s sleep in the first place.
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Mosquito Bites
The Maid awoke and saw the bug
She raised her hand and brought it down
Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on Earth. They kill roughly a million people a year by spreading nasty diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever, West Nile virus, Zika and encephalitis.
You only have to worry about female mosquitoes biting you. The males rely on nectar from plants. Actually, the females feed on nectar too. The blood they suck out of you is for their eggs.
The ladies have a specially designed proboscis with two tubes that pierce your skin. One tube injects their saliva, which carries an enzyme that makes your blood clot more slowly. Mosquito saliva also makes their bites itchy and carries the deadly diseases.
Meanwhile, the second tube sucks up a blood meal for the little ones Mama Mosquito has to feed. Luckily, it’s only a fraction of your blood. In fact, it would take a million mosquitoes to drain all the blood out of your body. So no worries there.
Mosquitoes may be annoying, but their weird noses inspired a less-painful hypodermic needle. So the next time you get bit by a mosquito, you can curse the little lady. Or thank her for taking most of the sting out of your flu shot.
Part III / Fun Facts
Red Marks on Skin
Then the Queen came out still half asleep
And the staff all tried to hide their eyes
But they couldn't help taking a peek
Why does your skin get red when someone slaps or pinches you? It comes from your body’s natural instinct to protect you.
When the nerves in your skin sense an injury, they signal the blood vessels underneath to dilate (grow bigger). This allows more blood to flow through these vessels and reach the site of the injury. If the skin was broken, you would want this extra blood because it carries clotting factors to stop blood loss, plus white cells to fight off infection. The red marks you see are actually this extra blood rush.
After your body realizes there is no danger from an open wound, the excess blood drains away and the red area fades. But a really hard slap can cause some tiny capillaries to burst and leak a small amount of blood. These red marks can last much longer while the capillaries heal.
How Mosquitoes Breed
Though the Maid had killed one, hordes more of the pests
For mosquitoes require little more than
Some water where their eggs can float
Every one of the over 3,500 species of mosquitoes needs one thing to breed—water. Some species lay their eggs directly on the surface of a water source. Others lay their eggs in small depressions in the ground or other surfaces. These eggs wait—sometimes for years—until water collects in the shallow cavity and provides the conditions they need to hatch.
Once in water, mosquito eggs generally hatch within 1-3 days. They feed on algae, bacteria and other organic material on the water’s surface. Eggs usually take 10-14 days to develop into adult mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes do not live very long, so they start breeding just about a day after becoming adults. Males only live for a week or two, while females can survive a month or more. Females can produce between 50-500 eggs in a first brood and much less after that. But some can produce up to 10 broods.
Mosquitoes prefer hot and humid conditions, so the adults start dying off when the weather gets cold. But their eggs and larvae (the first stage after hatching), can survive the winter and start the lifecycle over again when it gets warm.
Part IV / Fun Facts
Yawning
She worked all through the darkened night
And when the guards came to her cell
For as often as we do it, it’s not surprising that there has been a lot of research into yawning. So we know that yawns usually last six seconds. And during that time, the person’s heart rate can increase as much as 30%. Research has also shown babies in the womb yawning as early as 11 weeks.
One purpose of yawning is to cool off your brain when it overheats. National Geographic tells us that during an open-mouthed yawn, the sinus walls “expand and contract like a bellows, pumping air onto the brain, which lowers its temperature.”
Yawning also brings more oxygen into your bloodstream and cleanses it of carbon dioxide. This can help you concentrate better and think more clearly.
And if reading these facts about yawning is making you yawn, that’s not weird. Spontaneous yawning happens when you are tired or bored. But yawning when see or hear someone else yawning—or even read about it—is called contagious yawning. Even our dogs and cats can “catch” a yawn from us. Researchers are still debating why contagious yawning happens.
Fishing Nets
"I took a net that was used to trap fish
And scrubbed off everything briny
Then wove in lots of string throughout
Until all the holes were tiny"
Fishing nets have been around since ancient times. Perhaps that’s because they are one of the most efficient ways to catch fish. Early peoples made their nets from grasses, tree fibers and other materials that grew nearby their water source. However, these materials are organic, so most ancient netting materials have fallen apart over the years.
The oldest net ever discovered was made over 10,000 years ago and dates back to somewhere between 8,300 and 8,500 B.C.E. It was preserved in a swamp in Finland that used to be a lake. The Antrea Net, as it is known, was excavated in 1914. Floats and net weights found with fragments of twisted and knotted willow helped archeologists figure out the purpose of all these finds.
While there are not many physical examples of early people’s nets, ancient artwork helps tell the story. Rock carvings, cave paintings, tomb paintings in Egyptian pyramids and more give us a window into the history of how our ancestors fed themselves by using nets to fish.