As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to be averse to water after more than a week of unremitting clouds and rain, the Newtown Health Department is urging us this week to start attacking areas of standing water around our homes and workplaces, where mosquitoes breed. Mosquitoes, nature’s perfect virus delivery system, have been found in lower Fairfield County to be carrying a deadly payload of the West Nile Virus, which killed seven people and infected 62 in New York last summer. The virus causes brain swelling and is fatal when left untreated.

So trusting that the rain will stop by week’s end, we can all stop building arks and focus our attention on draining the little pools of water that are sitting in roof gutters, on pool covers, in idle wheelbarrows, and in myriad impervious pockets around the yard. For their part, the town’s health officials, with the help of the highway department, will apply a biological larvicide to the standing water in catch basins. So long as infected mosquitoes are not detected in Newtown, we should be able to avoid the kind of pesticide spraying programs that are currently taking place in lower Fairfield County and New York.

With a virus as deadly as West Nile, it should not be hard to see the benefits of prevention over cure. The use of state money for larvicide and a little extra vigilance around the house should help thwart the spread of the virus on the tiny transparent wings of mosquitoes. The rise of this virus and other insect borne diseases like Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, and babesiosis, which stalk us in the form of the tiny deer tick, is also reminding us what little control we have over the endless unfolding of the natural world.

If this week’s weather made you feel a little down and frustrated, think of the populations that are displaced by flood, drought, and wildfire each year. Think of the decline of the rainforests, which pump oxygen into the planet’s atmospheric chrysalis and provide the raw materials for innumerable beneficial drugs currently in use and yet to be discovered. Think of past efforts to “cure” the world of its ills through indiscriminate use of chemicals.

The news isn’t all bad, however. Out of this discouragement and frustration is arising a new awareness of how we can adapt and use what we have learned about the world and its ecosystems to protect our own health and the health of the environment that so critically affects our well-being. The larvicide to be used by local health officials this week, for example, employs a naturally occurring bacterial spore that kills mosquitoes but does not harm humans or other animals. Year by year, we are learning about the causes and effects of weather, adjusting our thinking about the use of greenhouse gases and other pollutants that may alter the atmosphere and ocean temperatures in ways that come back to haunt us.

So when the clouds finally do dissipate, let’s take a little encouragement from the return of the prodigal sun and resolve once again to do our part. Go dump the water out of that bucket in the backyard.