By Key J. Brel, Environmental Secretary

Residents of North America may have noted an increased population of culex pipiens, AKA the common “house mosquito” over the last few months. Indeed, internal studies have found mosquito populations observed at nearly 240% over 2017’s numbers. Unfortunately, this increase in mosquito activity is definitely the fault of us, the Grand Lock Department of Environmental Affairs. We’d like to officially go on the record to say “our bad” and furthermore, “sorry.”

Some background: the Grand Lock Department of Transportation’s “Vision 20/20” report outlines, among other goals, its intention of rehabilitating the long disused secret Grand Lock subway systems that crisscross large swaths of North East United States and Canada. Among the many challenges impeding this goal (extensive flooding, the antiquated “horse-drawn” subway cars, “tunnel people”), one challenge in particular falls under the purview of our office: bat infestation. These ancient tunnels are breeding grounds for many species of bats–which, our offices jointly agree–are very creepy. If rehabilitation is to continue, it would fall on our office to de-bat these work areas.

As is our usual strategy with projects like this, we designed to lure the bats away using strategic “introduced species.” Our department’s brilliant founder, High Key P. Wiśniewski pioneered the groundbreaking ecological theory of the “macro-biome hot swap”–that the world’s ecosystems are resilient enough to sustain, nay, encourage a kind of “three-card-monte” of species swaparoos. Under his guidance, the Grand Lock was responsible for success stories like introducing the mongoose to Australia, the housecat to New Zealand, and the Himalayan blackberry to the property lines of bad neighbors.

Using the Wiśniewski method, we initiated a two-pronged attack against the bats. First, we spread 10,000 giant golden silk orb-weaver eggs (bat eating spiders) throughout the secret subway tunnels. In retrospect, this was a bad plan as enormous carnivorous spiders are decidedly more creepy than the bats we hoped to eradicate.

Second, we sprayed 8 million mosquito larvae into high elevation freshwater supplies across the North-east United States. The idea was to spook the bats out of the tunnels with the giant spiders and lure them into the mountains with an abundance of their favorite food.
Unfortunately for us all, we miscalculated. Due to increased global urbanization and warmer temperatures due to climate change (both only partly our fault), the mosquito larvae thrived well beyond the limits of their errant bats stomach capacity. The mosquitoes, officially, are out of control.

As a reminder, DDT, DEET, and citronella are all on the list of known Grand Lock mind control agents and should be avoided at all costs. We’re also not wild about the hypnotic, psychologically-suggestible effect of looking through mosquito netting. The official recommendation of this agency is to stay indoors this summer and to catch up on your shows.

Again, really sorry about this whole mess. It’s still early but we do have an idea to introduce a new mutation of hyper aggressive Canada geese to help curb the mosquito outbreak. From where we’re at, it seems completely foolproof but we’ll let you know.

From Volume 872 Issue 36 – Subscribe here, members, to be the first to get the next newsletter!