On the mosquito

I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween,
Has not the honor of so proud a birth-
Thou com'st from Jersey meadows, fresh and green,
The offspring of the gods, though born on earth;
For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she,
The ocean nymph that nursed thy infancy.

--William Cullen Bryant

I witnessed a miracle tonight,
Well, maybe not a miracle, it happens millions of time a day, but today it happened in my classroom.

I saw a pupating mosquito larva erupt into a tiny pale adult.

***

The late January sunset floods the back wall of or classroom. I have a small tank of elodea. A few snail keep the plants company. About a week ago, I noticed a few wrigglers in the tank. I have no idea how they got there. 

Just before I leave, I make my rounds, checking our plants, our roly polies, our snails. I love watching the elodea bubble off oxygen. It's a nice way to end my work school day.

Just under the water's surface, I glimpsed a violent wiggling. A glassine wriggler struggled at the surface, occasionally contracting violently, reminiscent of the last violent transition stage of human birth.

In this tiny universe, the glassine mosquito struggled against the water's skin. The pupa looked like fine crystal, lit by the setting sun and the tiny light above.

I watched for about 15 minutes, until, finally, a pale adult mosquito emerged, paused, then attempted flight. Three times it jumped, three times it came back to the water, with the tentativeness of a newborn foal testing its legs. 

It needs nectar, and it won't find it tonight. I suspect it will be dead by morning.

***

Where did it come from? How do the countless microscopic critters alive in our room find their way here?

I encourage my students to draw conclusions from the observations they make. They now have a decision.

They can trust me when I tell them spontaneous generation does not happen, that all cells come from pre-existing cells, that life only comes from existing life. The ponds outside a frozen, the snow over a foot deep. We have not seen flying insects outside for over a month.

And I have a tank full of wrigglers sitting in the back of my classroom.

Or they can quietly believe in spontaneous generation. For a few moments tonight, as I knelt watching the emerging pale ghost of a mosquito erupt from the water, I would have quietly agreed with them.

The poem excerpt is from The Mosquito, written in the 19th century.
The music is from Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, "I'm Nature's Mosquito"--I'm playing it in class tomorrow.