More Flag Wrapping

-

 

I pledge allegiance to the Great Mosquito
and to the Yellow Fever which it spreads

The Mississippi Commission to Redesign the State Flag received over 3,000 proposals. Some were obviously jokes, which was expected, and at least one of those jokes -- or at least we assume it was a joke -- inadvertently made its way onto the published list of 147 "finalists." Supposedly this happened because of a typo on a commissioner's "first cut" list. 

While it's not exactly dignified enough for courtrooms, the Great Mosquito Flag certainly strikes a chord in the hearts of all Mississippians. According to one source, the mosquito pictured on the proposed flag would be capable of sucking 12 gallons of blood per hour! As far as I know, the only bloodsucking parasite capable of exceeding this rate of consumption is a Mississippi politician. 

Seriously (and in my opinion, sadly), the Great Mosquito flag was a joke. The guy who submitted it did so to poke fun at a coworker who was against retiring the old "rebel" state flag. And design-wise, it is simply a Stennis "Hospitality" Flag with a giant Aedes aegypti substituted for the central star. Not much to it.

But since this is a joke, here are some Mississippi mosquito jokes...

Tree damage from passing flock of mosquitoes

Mosquitoes in the Mississippi Delta region are required to file flight plants with the nearest air traffic control tower to ensure they don't interfere with agricultural aircraft (crop dusters).

At least one sheriff's department uses camera-equipped mosquitoes to monitor traffic on I-55 North.

Mississippi mosquitoes may be identified by the FAA registration numbers painted on their tails.

Some Mississippi Delta counties have road signs prohibiting landing aircraft on public roads. While many folks think this is to keep crop dusters from refueling and refilling in the road, the truth is that it's a form of mosquito control.

A friend of mine overheard two mosquitoes talking in a nearby tree. One asked the other, "Should we eat him here or take him back to the nest." The other replied, "Better eat him here. If we take him back to the nest the big ones will steal him from us."








Popular posts from this blog

Shawi, the Trash Panda God

-
Image
  Shawi is the Choctaw name for the raccoon ( Procyon lotor ),  a ring-tailed species of mammalian bandit. Raccoon in its family tree. I've known a bunch of them well. And I owe the trash pandas a blog post. The Trash Panda Family Tree  (Mandatory Mammal Speciation Lecture) Without belaboring the biology more than it's worth (which for me is a lot), raccoons are classified by taxonomists in the family Procyonidae , which they share with coatis, ringtails, kinkajous, and eleven other species. Giant pandas, on the other hand,  are in the same taxonomic family with as bears, black bears, brown bears, polar bears, big bears, little bears, and the bear that watched the still while Lord Buckley went into town to vote Raccoons were in fact long thought to be related to bears. (The German name for raccoon means "washing bear.") But truth is, raccoons are more closely related genetically to weasels, skunks, badgers, and otters than they are to bears. Collectively, they are a
Read more

Nerd: Another Strange & Terrible Saga

-
  We all called the guy "Nerd." Of course, he had a real name, but I didn't know it then or now. For this I am eternally grateful. He was a type specimen. If they had such things in the Field Museum in Chicago, he'd be stuffed and on display, the paragon of his subspecies. I'd say he was straight out of the "Revenge of" movies, but those didn't come out for 10 or 12 years after "Nerd" fell off my radar. White socks, black oxford shoes, highwater slacks, button down white short sleeve shirt, a pair of calculators dangling on his belt, pocket protectors, all that jazz, he was the full tilt boogie of Nerddom. We took a class called "Air Pollution Control & Abatement" together in the early 70s. Think about it. Anybody, myself included, who took Environmental Science classes back then was a nerd. And Nerd stood out among us.  [ A stock photo of    "A Man Out Standing In His Field"   goes here but is not included,     b
Read more

Bigger Fish to Fry

-
Image
Once it had mandated the removal of the 1894 "Confederate" state flag, the Mississippi Legislature realized it had bigger fish to fry. First up, repealing Prohibition . That's right, Prohibition. You know, the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The same Prohibition that ended in the United States of America in 1933.  Okay, it's not quite as weird as it sounds for Mississippi to be repealing Prohibition almost 90 years after the fact. It's weirder.  It's instructive to begin with the beginning. Mississippi enacted statewide prohibition of alcohol in 1907 . And it was the first state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment twelve years later. But in truth, the Great Sovereign State of Mississippi has a much longer history with restricting the sale of booze. Around 1839, there was a (short-lived) state law that banned the sale of alcohol in amounts less than one gallon. Naturally, this didn't sit well with tavern keepers, and the law was r
Read more