When Brian was a kid, he placed in a bucket the most interesting looking rocks he could find in his back yard. His back yard was only an eighth of an acre, but his parents landscaped it elaborately and he found beautiful rocks among the mulch. As he searched, he felt a drop of water on his face. He looked up at the sky and then heard his mother shout from the doorway that he must go inside their house. The boy placed his bucket on the ground and ran through the door only seconds before a heavy rain fell. He looked out of a window and watched his bucket fill with water. He then went to his room, found something else to do, and forgot about his bucket and collection of rocks.

When the rain stopped, a mosquito found Brian’s bucket of water. It landed on the surface of the standing water and laid eggs. The mosquito’s eggs floated on the surface of the water for two days. After those two days, the eggs hatched.

One larva among the larvae was extraordinary. Its cognitive abilities were humanlike. If Brian had the same qualities, he would have been called a prodigy. The larva did not know it was extraordinary. No one told it. The larva spent its time like the other larva: swimming in the bucket, feeding, shedding its skin, and visiting the surface to take a breath of air through its siphon tube.

The larva changed into a pupa during its fourth molt. Its time being a pupa was a time of rest. It was a time of reflection. It was a time for the pupa very unlike its larval days when it hungered constantly for microorganisms. It did not continuously crave and consume organic matter. It had time to think. As the pupa flipped around the water, it noticed other pupae. It saw the number of them. It noted they had everything in common. It wondered how, among so many, it could feel so alone.

Two days later, its pupal skin split. The mosquito stood on the surface of the water waiting to dry. Its body hardened. The mosquito saw its own legs. They meant to it greater access to the world. It saw a new world that was beyond the bucket of water. The mosquito felt its wings on its back. It wondered how life could be so wonderful to give him legs one minute and wings the next. When its wings dried, it flew. He could go where he wished: the deck, a flower, a leaf on a tree. It was more freedom than it ever believed it would have.

The mosquito was determined not to lead a solitary life only dedicated to meeting its own basic needs. It would use its intelligence to live a life of greater purpose. It would use its mobility to reach other mosquitos. It observed wasps and thought it would form social groups as they did. It would lead other mosquitos to less risky sources of protein than blood. It would teach them to lay eggs in locations offering higher survivability than puddles. This is the meaning the mosquito wanted for its life.

The mosquito observed a songbird flying in the backyard. This songbird, like other songbirds, was intelligent and had extraordinary vocal learning capabilities. The bird was able to name its children, and its children remembered their names their entire lives. It was a bird who ate mosquitos. It was a bird who may have eaten the mosquito if Brian had not been there. Brian, who left the bucket out where the mosquito was born and developed into an adult, clapped his hands once and killed it.

//eS