The Bill and Melanie Gates Foundation wanted to see if there was a way to use lasers to detect parasites. Specifically, they wanted to see if lasers could detect malaria parasites in the bloodstream, and they found they could. Another group is using lasers to nip malaria at its source, the mosquito. It is called a Photonic Fence, and it detects mosquitoes at a distance and shoots them down with lasers. Zapping parasites in the blood seems doable, but I dunno about a Photonic Fence. Does it zap one skeeter at a time, or a whole cloud? Has anyone counted how many mosquitoes there are in this world, and how many Photonic Fences there would be needed to zap them all? And what would PETA say? I think they should leave the mosquitoes alone and devote their energy to doing something useful with their lasers, like fixing flats.  

 

 

The buzz is a photonic fence

Will zap and kill the buzzers

It gets his aunts and uncles too

And all his little cuzzers

 

Oh little buzzer how you fly

So quick and sharp and zippy

In just two seconds you will die

Ouch! That’s just one Mississippi

 

It’s late at night, I’m sound asleep

When near my ear a buzzing

My laser flares my wife recoils

I say it isn’t nuzzing

 

Out by the trees a flitting shape

It’s getting late at night

Was that a skeet or firefly

I just shot out his light

 

Is that my neighbor by the fence

I aimed and hit him low

I told the judge I saw him buzz

But he wouldn’t let me go