The Most Dangerous Creature In The World

When people are asked to think about dangerous animal, they normally consider big vicious animals with huge teeth or massively poisonous snakes or spiders.

The truth is that the most dangerous animal in the world is in fact a tiny barely perceptible little vampiric bastard that is responsible for more illness and death than any other creature.

This little monster is responsible for transmitting disease to over 700 million people every year, resulting in over 2 million deaths.

Can you believe that?

This demonic blood-sucking little fiend is the mosquito and has terrorised me for the last month or so, as well as several times in in my recent lifetime.

Regular readers will know that I am a barely recovering hypochondriac and I have recently fallen off the wagon and spent hours fretting over potential illness. My trip to Brazil meant that I had to be vaccinated against Yellow Fever, a disease spread by these damned insects, and that in itself caused me major mental problems, convincing myself that I would catch the disease before my feet left the shores of Britain (you can read about it here) .

In the past, going to places like China, I have had to take malaria tablets to protect myself against another disease spread by mosquitos. Worse, the bloody tablets made me feel ill anyway with the list of possible side-effects being almost as terrifying as catching the disease itself.

I travelled to Brazil armed with enough mosquito repellent to thwart a vast swarm of the little buggers. If you haven’t used mosquito repellent, let me tell you that it is one of the most revolting substances ever stored in an aerosol can.

First, I had to smother myself in high factor sun screen to protect my delicate skin from the powerful rays of the sun. On top of that, I then had to spray all of my exposed skin with mosquito repellent. 

There are three other things you need to know about mosquito repellent.

First of all, it absolutely stinks. If you want to go out at night time and wear something that makes you smell nice, forget it. My paranoia informed me that the people would probably keel over as I walked past due to the stench of this foul liquid protecting me against blood-sucking mosquitos.

Second, mosquito repellent is nasty stuff. The warnings on the can tell you not to spray it near your lips and eyes because it will cause a lot of irritation. I speak from experience. One night, I was a little overenthusiastic and some of the foul substance hit me in the face. I could feel it on my lips. I was in the bathroom, swearing and cursing as I vigorously removed all traces with copious amounts of water.

Finally, this stuff ruins your clothes. Again, in another bout of overenthusiastic squirting, I managed to spray loads of it all over my shorts, leaving a nasty little stain that made people think I had had an accident on the way to the toilet. I also managed to spray some onto my black leather watch strap, resulting in a black stain on my skin that I had to scrub for hours to remove.

After a week and a half in Brazil, of covering ourselves in this crap, we were delighted to report that no insect had bitten us.

However, something happened that caused the hypochondriac within to surface with maximum prejudice.

There is a disease called Dengue Fever which is prevalent in the tropics, including South America. Brazil has had many problems with it over the past few years. It is spread by a variety of mosquito called aegis aegypti. 

Worse, this disease is incurable.

We arrived in Búzios at the end of our holiday for a relaxing couple of days by the sea and quickly fell into the routine of lazing in the sun. Sadly, we were so free of stress that we forgot to spray ourselves with mosquito repellent.

The result? We woke up on the first morning with a few bite marks on our legs.

Mrs PM thought nothing of it.

I, on the other hand, mutated into The Hypochondriac, and instead of calmly reading a book by the pool, I spent hours searching the internet on my phone looking for symptoms of Dengue Fever trying to calculate whether the little bastards  that had bitten us where in fact mosquitos or some other nasty little blood-sucking critters.

Within hours I had become an expert on Dengue Fever – and I didn’t like what I read. The chances of catching it were slim (only 250,000 cases out of 180 million people in Brazil), and even if we had been bitten by a mosquito, the chances of it being an aegis aegypti were even smaller.

What's more, the aegis aegypti would have to be infected with Dengue Fever anyway as the disease is spread when the mosquito bites a person infected with the disease. Furthermore, it was spring in Brazil and peak mosquito time is in the summer (December to March).

At university I studied statistics as part of my degree and all of my common sense was telling me that the bites were totally harmless and the chances of catching something nasty were very slim. Logic was thrown out of the window by The Hypochondriac.

The thing is that Dengue Fever is like a really nasty bout of the flu, with added

For the rest of our stay in Brazil, we saturated ourselves in mosquito repellent (I virtually SHOWERED in the stuff) and we weren’t bitten again.

Mrs PM took it all in her stride and enjoyed her time without worry.

I tried to but I struggled to silence the voice at the back of my mind trying to convince me that I was doomed to Dengue Fever.

Thankfully, the bites have disappeared and the incubation period over so I will not succumb to Dengue Fever.

However, my fear of mosquitos is now instilled and I know that in order to eliminate that fear, I have to soak myself in an obnoxious liquid, allow a nurse to stab me with a needle full of an unspeakably vile substance or take tablets that I know will make me ill.

All this because of a tiny buzzing, six-legged little horror that the eye can barely perceive – the most dangerous creature in the world.

I want to go on record right now to reiterate the fact that mosquitos, like wasps, are right up there in the list of creatures that I would eliminate from planet Earth if I were given omnipotent powers.

And, like wasps, I will endeavour to eliminate them one at a time, whenever the opportunity arises.

At least then I will never accidentally spray mosquito repellent in my face again.

Black and Yellow Peril

Today I saw my first wasp of the year and it lead me to ask the question: what is the bloody point of a wasp?

I have asked many people this question and nobody has ever given me an answer that convinces me that they serve any function on this planet other than to torment humankind, the little black and yellow buggers.

I have to confess that I am scared of them, hence the point of this post. Bees also sting but at least they appear to be productive and, unlike their detestable cousins, actually serve a purpose in life’s great machine. Wasps are just criminal insects that should be butchered.

There are people out there who love wasps and preach about the good that they do. These people are typically gardeners or naturalists. I think they are crazy. To me there is no argument for the ongoing existence of these yellow and black striped stinging pests but to some their continued presence during the summer months is wholly justified. I mean, how can the fact that they kill other pests be a good thing? The pests they sting and eat are not the kind of vindictive creature that would stab you and then laugh about it as they buzz away in search of their next victim.

So what’s so bad about wasps?

Wasps sting. Not only do wasps sting, wasps sting repeatedly. Not only do they sting repeatedly, they sting for no bloody reason as far as I can tell. Gardeners bleat on about wasps only stinging when provoked. What a load of old cobblers. How can I provoke a wasp just sitting outside a pub in the summer drinking and chatting with friends? Are the little swines jealous? No of course they’re not; the little bleeders come in groups and attack a table full of innocent people causing the people to react in one of three ways. A person will throw their arms around, screaming like a little baby as the wasp hovers close by laughing its little head off. Either that or they will run around like a demented imbecile being chased by the giggling black and yellow bugger. Or maybe, the so-called brave ones will sit there and allow the wasp to indulge by letting the warped creature wander over their body. And then the little sod will sting (of course in this case the person probably deserves it).

Unlike bees, who really do only sting in self defence, when a wasp stings it does not die. Bees therefore have to think very carefully about who or what they sting. The pro-wasp lobby would argue that wasps, too, only sting in self defence but let’s just look at the evidence. Ask yourself how many people you know have suffered a bee sting and then compare that with the number of people you know who have been stung by a wasp. I think you will find that there is no comparison whatsoever.

Wasp stings can be fatal. Just let that statement sink in. I hasten to add that this is not a normal reaction; however, there are extreme cases where people have suffered a wasp sting and suffered anaphylactic shock. Again the pro-wasp lobby will say that such cases are very rare indeed. Having never been stung by a wasp I personally do not want to find out the hard way whether I am one of those rare cases.

Wasp nests can contain from 3000 to 5000 individual wasps in late summer. If you are unfortunate enough to have a wasp nest in your garden or, worse, in a roof space of your house, then the likelihood of being stung increases quite a lot. The experts say that if you discover a wasp nest that is occupied then you should leave it undisturbed. What fantastic advice – especially if it is in your own home.

From my experience, wasps love to persecute humans and instinctively know when a person is scared to death of them. During the summer months, if you see a person running around screaming and waving their arms in the air like a demented windmill you will usually see one or more wasps in pursuit and I’m sure that if you listen closely to the buzzing noise you will hear a form of insectile laughter. And that person will almost certainly be me. When confronted by a wasp, a primeval survival instinct takes over and I run, fuelled by fear and adrenalin, knocking over tables, chairs and children and screaming like a banshee while other people and wasps observe and enjoy the impromptu comedy performance.

Wasps humiliate me. Wasps annoy me. Wasps can hurt me. Wasps could kill me. Wasps serve no other purpose in the big picture than that.

That is why, if I were given a single omnipotent wish, I would give serious consideration to committing insect genocide on a global scale, removing all traces of the little yellow and black stinging bastards from planet earth. That’s what wasps do to me; I could solve all the world’s ills in one go but instead I want to eradicate billions of insects.

Regrettably I will never be granted such a wish. In the meantime I will approach the problem in my own tiny way by killing any wasp that crosses my path and eliminate the buggers one by miserable one.