Writing Prompt/Mosquito Bites with Connie Goldsmith

A Day With Mosquitoes 

Buzzzz. Whine. Buzz. Slap! Bzzz, bzzz, ouch! Splat!

Have mosquitoes ever ruined your day? Do mosquitoes have any value to human society? Bees give us honey and pollinate our crops. Ladybugs eat aphids on our roses. Worms compost our soil. Dung beetles . . .  well, you get the picture.

Mosquitoes are an important source of food for some animals. Bats eat 600 mosquitoes an hour. Birds, frogs, and fish get their fair share as well. But do mosquitoes do anything for people?

Today’s writing prompt has two paths. Pick one or both.

First, think about a day when mosquitoes drove you crazy. What were you doing? Who were you with? How would the day have been different if it had been mosquito-free? Write a paragraph about your memories of that day, maybe in a different setting or with a different person. It’s your day. Change it any way you want to.

The second path is to imagine what mosquitoes might do for people that would be beneficial. In a zoology class I once took, the teacher asked us to make up an entirely new creature. We had to imagine how it looked, what it ate, and how it reproduced. It was harder than it sounded. Try to think of three things mosquitoes might do for us – let your imagination run wild. Rebuild the insect if you want to so that it can do something useful!

Mosquitoes are more than just pests. They carry malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever. They even crossed the Atlantic to bring West Nile virus to our shores a few years back. My new book, “Battling Malaria: on the Front Lines Against a Global Killer,” may teach you a few things about mosquitoes and how they carry malaria to millions of people each year. You might look at mosquitoes in a whole new way.

Connie Goldsmith
www.conniegoldsmith.com
My new books from Lerner:
Battling Malaria: On the Front Lines Against a Global Killer
USA Today Health Reports: Hepatitis
USA Today Health Reports: Influenza
USA Today Health Reports: Skin Cancer

Check out Connie's Previous Writing Prompt Here:
http://mywordplayground.blogspot.com/2010/09/writing-prompthave-fun-thinking-sun.html