MOSQUITO
STORIES
(excerpts
from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure
to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material
is not in the public domain)
1) I saw one in a book about how a visitor to an Island was curious
about the netting over the bed. But when he slept at night, a
pleasant humming that continued all night was thought to be delightful.
The Island residents helped him round up every last mosquito to
take back to his king as a present! It was called something like
How the Mosquitoes left.....? Now I can't remember the book.
2) Margaret Read MacDonald's book, Earth
Care, which has The Mosquito Extermination Project. It
is a variant of The King, the Mice and the Cheese.
3) Mosquito folktales
How Mosquitoes Came To Be - American Indian
Myths and Legends, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz,
4) The Mosquito - Gypsy Folktales,
Diane Tong
5) "Simple" string figure, Anne Pellowski's book,The
Story Vine is called The Mosquito. Make that mosquito figure,
then drop the loops off your little fingers. Then slap your hands
together to smash the bug.
6) Tall Tales about mosquitoes - starting with a Paul Bunyan tale
where they were so big the loggers had to hide under the giant
skillet and when the mosquitoes poked their "beaks" through, the loggers bent them over, finally all the mosquitoes
were attached and flew off with the skillet. Look in Bibliography
on http://www.eldrbarry.net/
7) There is the poor mosquito in Verna Aardema's story Why Mosquitoes
buzz in People's Ears.
8) The origin of mosquitoes in the Pacific Northwest after Cannibal
Giant was tricked into falling in the fire by Raven, the ashes
drifting off in the smoke became the biting flies and mosquitoes.
9) The joke about the mosquitoes discussing eating the camper.
10) In The Noisy Gecko, an Indonesian folktale (found in one storytelling
book for preschoolers) is a cumulative tale that ends with Rain
telling Gecko that he must let each animal (being) do his/her
job. If rain doesn't fill the holes in the road with water then
Mosquito won't have a home, and Gecko won't have anything to eat.
11) The totem pole in front of the Governor's Mansion in Juneau,
Alaska has a totem pole of how mosquitoes came to the Tlingit
people (the story varies from clan to clan).
12)
Plesant DeSpain's
The Day the Mosquitoes Ate Angela Jane.
13) There's a great tall tale in the book Swapping
Stories - Folktales from Louisiana. recorded by stoyteller
Harry Methvin. It's called Mosquitos Save
a Life. It's a story of a man who is bitten by a rattlesnake.
He lies in the swamp all night and when they find him, there is
a pile of dead mosquitos beside him. And dat's for true!
Oh, another in the same book called The
Legend of the Mosquito, recorded by Tang Thi Than Van,
a Vietnemese woman who said she learned these tales from her grandmother.
Bare bones: A young couple is happily married and devoted
to one another. Wife becomes ill and dies. Young man goes seeking
the voodoo queen to bring her back, will do anything. She tells
him give three drops of own blood. He does, wife comes back to
life. But falls in love with another man. He says ok, but give
me back my blood. She cuts finger and gives three drops of blood
then dies and spirit becomes mosquito. That's why she goes searching
for blood, to become a woman again.
14) The Cherokee story known as Spear Finger
and Stone Finger has a variant as
the shape changer is successfully attacked by being stoned and
little chips of her body break off her body in the pit in which
she was trapped. She swears revenge and she will feast on their
blood and each tiny piece rises as the first mosquitoes.
15) I do remember when I lived in Minnesota -- I was on a camping
trip and heard two mosquitos buzzing near-by. It sounded like
an argument. I listened carefully, and they were fighting over
whether to eat me there or carry me back home to eat. One said, "We'd better eat her here. If we take her back, the big ones
will take her away from us." I headed for Howard Johnson's.
My daddy said he used mosquito labor to build a log barn. They
would come after him while he was felling the trees, and he would
duck behind one. The mosquito's stinger would go right through
the tree, and Dad would hit it with the side of the ax to bend
it down. Then he'd finish cutting the tree, and the mosquito would
fly away, usually tiring out just about where they wanted the
barn to be. He fed the mosquito meat to the dogs. Dad was thrifty
that way.
16) A folk legend (I think it's from a book called Things
Fall Apart): Mosquito tells ear that he loves her. Ear
refuses him saying that he won't stay. And the reason mosquitos
still buzz in ears is that he's telling her "I'm still here."
17) There's a story in Margaret Read-MacDonald's Earth
Care book. It's called Gecko,
I think. Bones: Gecko is annoyed
at fireflies blinking all night and keeping him awake. In trying
to solve the problem, he discovers that a whole series of events
is connected to why the fireflies are blinking. Buffalo leaves
manure in the road so Fireflies have to blink so people don't
step in it. Buffalo puts manure there because rain makes holes
in the road every afternoon and he doesn't want people to fall
in the holes. Rain makes holes because they are making puddles
for Mosquito to have a place to live. Uh-oh, he realizes that
in a round-about way if the fireflies don't blink, Mosquito will
die and he will starve! The moral of the story is that some things
you just have to put up with. I use it as an earth story and have
revised it quit a bit and named it lizard (more scientifically
correct—geckos are nocturnal). I also have incorporated a
lot of hand movements that the kids can help me with to make it
funny. I use the word 'poop' instead of manure until the Buffalo
corrects the terminology.
18) While looking for body or health stories, I found this from
Michael Harvey - an unusual twist on the body parts working together
story It ends with a mosquito!
" I have a book with a story in it about how once the different
parts of the body lived separate lives and it goes something like
this. One day a pair of legs, arms, eyes and ears are off hunting
together when the ears hiss "shh!" They swivel and see
a deer and the legs rush off in hot pursuit. The arms dive, catch
the deer and kill it. One by one the the various body parts get
to the kill and an argument ensues about who really killed it
and who gets the most meat. They argue until they realise that
they will not reach a resolution without help. They carry the
dead deer off to a wise man who lives on his own many miles away.
The wise man hears the bickering from a long way off and knows
what's going on. He meets the arms/legs/eyes/ears outside his
hut and tells them to give him the deer. He takes it inside, cooks
it and eats it and then calls them in. They see four stools in
front of them and each sits down. "Now then" says the
wise man "You lot need to be taught a lesson - the first
part of the punishment has already taken place - I've eaten your
dinner" the four friends see the pile of bones on the floor
and then he claps his hands and suddenly instead of four of them
sitting on four stools there is one sitting on one stool. They
have all been joined together. "Now you're going to have
to get on no matter what happens - and now for the last part of
the punishment" He takes a tiny box and opens and a tiny
insect flies out making a high pitched whine. That is why when
a mosquito flies near you, the ears hear it first, the eyes look
for it second, then the arms and hands try to swat it and finally
the legs - run away!"
I've told this a few times in schools and have always anticipated
a question about certain other parts of the body but so far have
been disappointed; however, it is interesting to speculate what
stories there may be about , well, I'll say it - gonads!
19) Me Mate Spider and the Mosquitos,
a delightful story by Australian storyteller: © Daryll Bellingham,
Storyteller. 1997 (An adaption of an old tall story and the circumstances
of a couple of pommy friends when they arrived in Queensland).
http://www.storytell.com.au/stories/Spider.html
(This web page updated 10/22/05)
