Florida's unique mosquito education centre delights children

Of all the creatures associated with Florida - alligators, flamingos, manatees - possibly the most consequential doesn’t show up in tourism ads or on travel websites.

Did you know that the mosquito prompted the invention of air conditioning? For that reason alone, it deserves some kind of special recognition. A statue, maybe? A proclamation? How about a museum?

St. Johns County in northeast Florida has seen fit to acknowledge the noxious insect with all three.

And now an eight-foot tall bronze statue of a fierce looking Aedes aegypti stands watch at the entrance to the Disease Vector Education Center - a.k.a. the mosquito museum, tthe only one of its kind in the United States. The museum sparked some outcry about public funding, but the community has become more accepting of it.

Despite its ponderous official name, the museum is a colorful, trippy delight: Outside is a mosquito-themed playground, complete with a sliding board designed to look like oversize versions of common mosquito hiding spots - a barrel of water on a stack of old tires. There’s a climbing block made from a concrete culvert (prime mosquito breeding grounds), and a dragonfly-shaped riding toy with a sign that reads, “Dragonflies are good to have around because baby dragonflies eat baby mosquitoes.”

The education center is ostensibly aimed at children but also geared toward teaching adults a little more about the No. 1 insect killer of humankind.

“Florida has the distinction of being one of the most pestiferous places on the planet,” said Gordon M. Patterson, author of “The Mosquito Wars: A History of Mosquito Control in Florida.” “That museum is teaching us that we need to learn something about mosquitoes and viruses and plants and water and our place in that ecology.”

Inside are interactive displays that include a life-size rendition of the front porch of an old Florida cracker house. A lifelike model of a yellow Labrador retriever named Albo - short for the type of mosquito that transmits heartworm - sits in the front yard, near his water bowl. That’s another example of a mosquito attractant. So is a small but realistic pile of Albo’s droppings: a part of the exhibit that makes schoolkids squeal with delight, museum guides say.

Across from that is a realistic slice of swampland: dark green, shadowy and damp, representing ideal mosquito habitat.

Both large displays have touch-screen computers set up that encourage visitors to try to spy mosquito hideouts. Push the right button, and a spotlight shines down on the water bowl, or the flower pot, or the birdbath and a half-dozen other common yard items. It makes the point that mosquitoes can lay eggs in even a teaspoon of water.

A helicopter takes up a big space indoors. Visitors can sit in the pilot’s seat and pretend to control the chopper on an aerial spraying mission as a video of the St. Augustine coastline plays in front of them.

There’s an insectary full of live elephant mosquitos, which are large and look slightly alarming but are actually harmless pollinators that don’t bite people or animals. They do feast on other mosquitos - an unusual bonus.

Those are Genhsy Monzon’s favorites.

“When people come in, the usual reaction is, ‘This is not what I expected,’ but positively,” said Monzon, an entomologist and the coordinator at the education center. “They’re just in awe as soon as they walk through the door, and honestly I love that, because that’s the same way I reacted.”

Displays of live creatures - scorpions, ants, a huge honeybee observation hive - highlight arthropods, both the helpful (to humans) and the unhelpful. The exhibits walk visitors through the mosquito life cycle (“Wet, Bloody, and Brief”) and feature digital microscopes to take an even closer look.

“The kids just hear, ‘Oh, there’s bugs!’ and they’re curious,” Monzon said. “And there’s a playground. … We make it fun for them. And that’s why they want to learn.”

Monzon points out that the museum informs visitors “about all kinds of disease vectors”: ticks, tsetse flies, sand flies, black flies, lice and fleas.

Some of the exhibits in the museum look like something from one of the big theme parks 100 miles south in Orlando: large, detailed and visually striking. They were designed by engineers and artists who have worked at Disney World and Universal Studios.

But in keeping with the St. Augustine vibe - the historic Castillo de San Marcos National Monument is about six miles away - the mosquito museum is less about theme-park fun and more about education.

“We’re not Disney World here in St. Augustine; we are history,” said Richard Weaver, the mosquito control district’s business manager. “And really our museum ties into that very well.”

Weaver, who helped to research and design many of the exhibits, stops himself before he says more.

“I said the word ‘museum,’ which is banned by us.”

That brings up a thorny subject involving disease vectors, politics and tax dollars.

Mosquito control is serious business in Florida. Most of the state’s 67 counties and many cities across the state have districts that work full time to contain the insects, some of them with elected officials who oversee multimillion-dollar budgets.

Mosquitoes are disease vectors, which means they can transmit diseases between species. Among them: malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus, yellow fever, and Zika virus. More than 700,000 people die each year from vector-borne diseases, according to the World Health Organization.

Controlling them is key to keeping Florida survivable for 23 million residents and 143 million annual visitors. The Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County, founded in 1948, is one of the best-known agencies dedicated to mosquito control. Researchers there work with universities and governments around the world, along with groups such as the World Health Organization.

Executive Director Rui-De Xue had the idea of a building a mosquito education center after visiting one in China several years ago. Supporters envisioned it as another tool in “understanding the tiny yet formidable mosquito,” as the center’s visitor guide puts it.

There was pushback from some residents and county commissioners about using tax dollars, but the mosquito district - which has an annual budget of about $9 million - forged onward. The district’s board said it makes sense to educate the public about things people can do to control mosquitoes: clean birdbaths every few days, empty the dog’s outdoor water bowl daily, dump out anything that holds standing water.

To get past the consternation over what critics called a bug museum, the name became the Disease Vector Education Center.

Monzon said more than 11,000 people visited in the first year, many of them part of school groups. The museum closes Mondays and Tuesdays to host school field trips. The rest of the week, it’s open to the public with free admission.

Sandra Gewehr visited when she was in town for the annual Arbovirus Surveillance and Mosquito Control Workshop last year. She recommends it, calling it a “smart and unusual choice” for tourists, especially families.

“While the subject matter is serious, the center does an admirable job of making it approachable and fun for children,” said Gewehr, who is director of research and development at the European Mosquito Control Association and based in Greece. “There are elements designed specifically to engage younger audiences - things they can touch, see up close, and interact with.”

Patterson, a history professor at the Florida Institute of Technology as well as a mosquito book author, gave the museum designers some tips and mosquito information. He likes the final results. There’s a historical timeline and exhibits that show the “epic battle” between humans and mosquitoes that was once mostly waged with chemicals - DDT used to be the insecticide of choice - and, more recently, with environmental controls.

He’s especially pleased with one display that lets visitors feed live mosquito larvae to a tank full of gambusia, also known as mosquitofish. The fish can consume up to 500 larvae a day and are seen as an environmentally friendly alternative to chemicals.

“I was knocked down at the level of expertise that they were able to deploy,” Patterson said. “We oftentimes think of history as just being driven by figures who stand on podiums and give talks, but sometimes something as small as a grape seed can cause more mischief and lead to more changes in the human population.”