大象传媒

There are quite a few Alaskan animals that you wouldn’t want in your house. An enclosed grizzly bear is a terrifying thought and would no doubt cause irreparable damage to your sofa. You definitely would worry about your light fittings with a 2m tall moose stomping through the kitchen and nobody has a big enough garden to feed the animal lawnmower army that is a herd of caribou.

there鈥檚 one animal more than any other that Alaskans take care not to invite into their homes: mosquitoes.

Alex Lanchester

But there’s one animal more than any other that Alaskans take care not to invite into their homes: mosquitoes. And for good reason. In summer they can reach plague proportions and can make being outside a living nightmare. They were always my least favourite animals, and for some unknown reason they seem to be attracted to me. Although I spend every holiday and filming trip doused in repellent and smelling like a citrus air freshener, I still return home peppered with bites. But in this case we didn’t have a choice. We wanted to film them emerging from their larval form and into their familiar adult form, so we needed to invite them in.

Cameraman Rob Drewett and I set up a studio in a garage in Fairbanks, central Alaska. Mosquito larvae are only a few millimeters long, so our filming tank was tiny, just the size of a drinks can. To collect the stars of the show I went out with entomologist Logan Mullen from the University of Alaska Museum to do the opposite of what every other Alaskan was doing: seek out mosquitoes. They love to lay their eggs in sheltered, still pools of water so we searched everywhere, from puddles at the side of the road to people’s rainwater collectors.

After transferring them into the set we began the time-consuming part: waiting for them to emerge. The books I had read said that mosquitoes normally emerge at night - but this was high summer in Alaska, we didn’t really have a night! Fairbanks is south of the Arctic Circle so doesn’t quite have 24-hour daylight, but at this time of year the sun only briefly dips below the horizon between 2am & 3am. We decided to start a vigil. In eight-hour shifts we took it in turns to stare into this tiny pool of water, willing something to happen. With the near endless daylight outside, we very quickly lost track of what time of day and even what day of the week it was.

Waiting for animals is good thinking time, and naturally I couldn’t help wondering more about mosquitoes. It’s only the females that are blood suckers. They use the blood to produce eggs which will then become the next generation. After they’ve got their blood meal they then have to find a suitable pool to lay their eggs. So really they are just mums trying to give their kids the best start in life. I was starting to feel empathy.

After five days of watching and waiting, the first larvae started to hatch. Metamorphosis is one of the true wonders of the natural world. We had witnessed, in just a few days, these insects completely transforming their body shape, changing from a squirming, maggot-like eating machine into a fully formed flying adult. Now I was filled with admiration. Breaking through their larval exoskeleton they started to rise like zombies from the water’s surface. It only takes them a couple of minutes to break free - and then without even a practice flight they’re up in the air flying. We had spent over a hundred hours waiting, and during that time I had totally transformed my feelings towards mosquitoes …but old habits die hard.

I had already spent many weeks swatting them away whilst filming caribou, so when I felt that tell-tale tickle as one landed on my arm, I couldn’t stop my other arm reacting. I looked down to see a squished mosquito on my arm – and I felt terrible. It could only be one of the ones that we had watched and filmed emerging, as we were still inside the garage. Swatting a mosquito had never bothered me before but now I was filled with remorse. In other parts of the world mosquitoes carry and transmit some very nasty diseases, but not in Alaska - so for the remainder of the filming I made a pact with myself that though I wouldn’t encourage them to bite me, I would stop swatting them. Anyway it was inevitable. I would be bitten, I always am. At least this way I could feel better about it: it was my penance.