F I V E - C O R N E R S

Mosquitoes: The Great Equalizer

By Charles Digges

AS Russia careens toward a fragmented class-based society of haves and have-nots - taking the nation's cultural capital with it whether it likes it or not - one equalizing force remains in place here: the blood-sucking fog of mosquitoes that hovers over St. Petersburg through the summer until late August or early September.

The sockless ankles of a shivering, kopekless drunk passed out in an alley are just as attractive to the needle-nose of the little vampires as are the gold-braided pectorals of a mobile phone-toting gangster pushing their hirsute way through the top five unfastened buttons on a silk shirt.

After all, this city was built on a swamp by Peter the Great, who, if he noticed the buzzing bloodsuckers himself, was nonetheless obviously distracted by the task of driving his construction conscripts further into the soggy marshlands.

I was reminded of this city's common curse a few evenings ago when the recent heat wave led me to make the mistake of falling asleep one night with the balcony door open. I awoke to a dive-bombing squadron of the bastards as they turned my back, shoulders, legs and forearms into an itchy Braille that I have been scratching to the point of near infection since.

I called an acquaintance of mine named Leonid, a university-trained bug specialist with a Ph.D. in entomology who has made his own war against mosquitoes a legend in his neighborhood.

I asked him what I could do.

"Nothing," he said.

"Buy a mosquito net for 10,000 rubles and put it over your bed, or move back to the United States. Everything else is too dangerous."

I figured he would know. He has tried everything from almost burning down his building to nearly killing relatives to get rid of them.

Like most older buildings in St. Petersburg, Leonid's on Ulitsa Blokhina has its share of standing water and leaky pipes in the basement.

This water, he explained, is absolutely ideal for mosquitoes, who lay their eggs on the surface. Female mosquitoes are the ones that bite you, Leonid said, because the blood provides the protein they need to lay their eggs. Each female then can lay as many as 1,000 eggs every couple of days. She requires a pool of standing water to deposit them.

The eggs themselves need oxygen. As such, a hideous little twist in evolution has supplied the egg sacks with microscopic snorkels to breathe.

But if you dump oil or gasoline into these pools, Leonid explained, it chokes up the snorkels, strangling the baby mosquitoes and you can kill up to 100,000 of the germinating parasites at once.

"But be sure you hang up a no smoking sign if you do this," he cautioned.

Two years ago, his building was almost incinerated when some kids sneaking smokes in the basement tossed their matches into the pool Leonid had filled with gas. A fire broke out instantly and the building was only saved by the quick wits of several neighbors who, seeing the smoke, smothered the flames with towels and carpets. The whole building stank like gas for a week.

Understandably, Leonid's neighbors ganged up on him and made him promise he wouldn't do it again.

The gas, however was an improvement over the bats.

From a friend at the St. Petersburg Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Leonid secured a male and female bat which he raised in a cage at his dacha. Turning them loose on nightly forays, Leonid said the bats would polish off as many as 10,000 mosquitoes an evening.

The idea was such a smash, Leonid decided to bring the bats home and turn them loose in his apartment while he and his family slept.

One night, however, his father-in-law was dive-bombed by one of them while groping his way in the dark to the bathroom. The bat got caught in his hair and the frantic flapping that ensued as the beast tried to free himself so frightened the man that he had a heart attack.

The father-in-law survived, but Leonid's wife - awakened by the screams of her father - had to break the animal's neck while trying to untangle it from the old man's hair. Leonid took the other back to the veterinarian the next day.

Leonid says he has reverted to lotion and aerosols but said at least half the mosquitoes in St. Petersburg are immune to its effects.

"Your only hope is just to let them suck and get their fill," he said with resignation. "After all they only feed once an evening."