Please, for the love of God, go toward the light!

              In Dr. May Berembaum's book The Earwig's Tail, I found a particularly useful piece of information that may save a couple of bucks for those who wish to relax on their porch. Apparently, thousands of porch-sitters have been swindled into purchasing bug zappers. These devices advertise the annihilation of mosquitos and other flying pests in the back yard. According to Berenbaum, bug zappers do indeed zap bugs but not the bugs intended to kill. Instead, moths and various nocturnal arthropods are enticed to their death like the unfortunate sailors who encountered the sirens.
               The majority of mosquitos will ignore the eerie light. Wherever there is a bug zapper, people seem to be found remotely close to the diabolical lighthouse. Therefore, mosquitos continue their predacious behavior. No matter how many modified jolly rogers show a mosquito's head on crossed bones are found on the box, the chances that a mosquito will be electrocuted are slim.
              I wasn't surprised when Berembaum broke the news to me. Earlier experiences had hinted at the false advertising of bug zappers. In the humid nights at Camp Hood, my fellow scouts and I would huddle under a kerosene lamp to play poker on a dilapidated table. While we played, shadows would dance on the cards as moths and hard shelled insects revolved around the lamp like electrons surrounding a nucleus. Moths of various colors (pink and yellow, black and white, orange) descended to the table, occasionally. Black beetles would land on our cards upside down. We would brush them off the cards and just watch them struggle like a turtle on its shell become upright again. Out of all the insects that the light attracted, the mosquito never showed any interest in the lamp. However, the mosquitos showed great interest in the bags of blood playing Texas Hold 'em in the middle of the forest.
               My suspicions were confirmed a year or two later when my parents bought a bug zapper for the back yard. That piece of junk helped the enemy more than it helped my family. With the contradictory lighthouse in sight, my family had more outside meals in ignorance as to what bugs were actually being killed when the zapper zapped. It took a few weeks for my parents to realize that the mosquito population wasn't decreasing. Soon, the family was back indoors eating in the complete comfort of our home.
              Repellents will have to satisfy those who wish to enjoy the warmth and luxuries of the outdoors during the summers.