King Mos Quito II to all mosquitoes everywhere, June 2011

Have you had your annual DEET vaccine?

Underlings!

Your efforts are insufficient! Millions of humans are wandering around, completely unannoyed by us. We must do something to remedy this issue before it becomes a full-blown catastrophe! Below I outline my plan for world domination through annoyance:

1) More squealing. A 2007 study from the University of Insects has shown that while many believe itchy bumps to be the most annoying thing caused by mosquitoes, emitting a high-pitched squeal into the ear of a human attempting to sleep is a close second. Keep it high, keep it constant, keep it simple.

2) More biting. This may seem too obvious to even mention, but apparently it bears repeating. I’ve had reports from the 900 block of Pine Street that you are not reaching biting quotas. People are simply going about their daily lives–even at dusk–without concern about bites. I’m not sure if this is a morale issue or what, but get piercing!

3) Itchier bites. Is this possible? There’s a band of soldiers inhabiting a puddle of stagnant water at the corner of Mercer and Dove Streets. They are doing amazing things with itchiness. Let’s invest in more research and eventually increase the number of humans going “uggggh it reeeeally itches…!”

4) Bite other animals. Don’t just bite humans. When the humans are brought to their knees by a constant itchy feeling around their ankles and elbows, we want to be the ones ready and waiting to take over the world. But if dogs and cats are just chilling, they’re going to be all like, let’s do this thing. We have to stop them simultaneously through a crack tactical combination of biting and squealing (see items 1-3).

Now raise your mouthparts high and join me in the battle cry that has inspired thousands of generations of our kind: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Thank you.

– His Majesty King Mos Quito II

Analysis:

Humans everywhere were shocked and terrified by the discovery of this letter by an entomologist in Brixton, New Hampshire in late 2009. Dated Thorax 12, 12187721 AIE (in the Mosquito Calendar: in our calendar, roughly 7:30 AM, sometime in Spring 2005), it comes from just before a Concord-area little league game had to be rescheduled due to mosquitoes (one coach for the Lemmy Craig Convenience Store Braves called the situation “our 9/11”). Could this have been the first salvo in an expanding war on humans?

Unfortunately for mosquitoes everywhere, scientists have described them as “very small and more annoying than dangerous.” Added to this is the increasing chaos caused by weak leadership. Mos Quito II, who inherited the throne from his Father, has shown himself to be unable to contain various court factions, and the Mosquito Kingdom, in a far cry from its glory days under Mosqui To IV, is more divided than ever. Pentagon strategists say the letter, and subsequent attacks, is more of a desperate attempt by a weak leader to consolidate power by uniting the kingdom against a common foe. Four weeks after the fateful game in Concord, a second offensive at a pool party in Taunton, MA was crushed by a human combined-arms counterattack of citronella candles and off-brand Off insect repellent.

Mosqui To IV, of course, was the mastermind of using Malaria in warfare. Insects everywhere looked on in awe as To’s forces swept across the world in an attempt to conquer it bolder than any since either Genghis Khan or Admiral Mallard Quacksworth, an English duck whose pirate navy controlled nearly all shipping in the Atlantic for most of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. So while most insects believed disease-warfare would be the future, humans quickly escalated their use of terrifying mass chemical warfare. One bug bomb in an apartment complex in suburban Atlanta killed scores of foster families for poor mosquito orphans. The horrifying destruction (one spokesinsect called the bombing “our 9/11”) caused a rethink among the King’s inner circle. The Mosquito Kingdom shifted to annoyance, hoping to reduce casualties, but when To died with just 450,000 offspring, the regime collapsed. Today it exists only as a loose regional confederation of insect barons.