Where ever you come from you are most certainly familiar with the mosquito. Perhaps unpleasantly familiar. Not only do they cause bites and itchy welts on the skin but they can occasionally be a carrier of various diseases such as Malaria, Dengue Fever or Zika. Could you imagine the sheer joy it must have been to be in such a beautiful place as Hawaii and not have been troubled at anytime by this pesky and irritable insect. Well if you had been in Hawaii prior to the year 1827 that is what it would have been like. Here is the story that is told to exemplify this point:
The Reverend Dwight Baldwin came to the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui from the northeastern United States in the 1820’s and became a missionary there. In 1827 the British ship Wellington came into port carrying horses from Mexico. Shortly thereafter one of the reverend’s flock of native Hawaiian’s came to him and exclaimed that ‘we have a new bird on the island’. Upon inquiry the Hawaiian man showed him what he meant and pointed to a mosquito. That was it, we’ve had them here ever since.