Got bit by the first Black Fly of 2009 the other day. Squashed that sucker flat and did not even think about it until later. No big deal. Once Mud Season winds down, Black Flies and Peepers will quickly follow. Just another rite of Spring here in mostly rural Maine. This morning early, I was sitting out on stone steps by the garage. The Sun was just peeking up solid over the trees to the East. It was the first truly warm morning since last July. The Black flies were already out in clouds. I sat and pondered this warm beautiful morning with that first fresh cup of coffee cradled between my hands. One of the little bastards landed on my forearm and dug in. Instead of squashing it, I flicked it off my arm. It landed right in that just poured cup full of coffee. I looked down at it as began to frantically backstroke on the surface. Flapping it's little wings and probably pissing black fly piss into my coffee. Little bastards. Dumbest damn insects on the planet in my opinion.
What to do? Do I pour it out and let the little bugger ruin that vitally important first coffee of the day? Do I try to fetch it out of there to save the cup? Then I remembered that in the course of any normal Black Fly Season, I will probably ingest, inhale or otherwise consume pounds and pounds of Black Flies before Mosquitoes move in and take over. So I drank the coffee.
As I dropped the cup from my lips, I looked inside. Hmm. Good. Fly is down the hatch. I imagined what sort of horror filled thoughts might be going through the mind of that fly as it traversed the gravity well to my stomach. I delighted in knowing it would suffer as stomach acids would consume it and break out the nutrients it might have within it to keep my body's energy level up. Then I remembered Black Flies must have no minds. They are so dumb, they cannot even find their way out from behind my glasses. Just keep beating themselves silly against the inside of my lenses until I manage to snag them and crush them out of their misery.
So it goes. The first true sign snow is behind us for a few months. Warm weather is here. Gardens are being tilled, grass is poking up and the the forsythia is brilliantly yellow. In the evening, the peepers begin their nightly song looking for other frogs to mate with. Life moves on it's predictable way and I once again get used to eating bugs.
Later....................
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8 comments:
Them bastards may not have brains but they sure got numbers on their side.
We've always called them sand flies but in recent years more are calling them black flies too. The worst ones are the no-seeums as they are small enough to crawl thru the screens. I'll be heading UP to the tundra the end of next month and those and other nasty biting flies will be in full swarm then.
Kulkuri I'm glad you mentioned that. I had forgotten what they were as I haven't been on the east coast for many years. Nasty little biters they are.
them little bahstids are miserable! But their presence means that fishing is about to get good!
Oh, and did you check your moustache for traces of his little black carcass? That's another option, I would think.
As long as you don't swallow a spider to catch the fly, etc., I'm sure you'll be fine.
My father-in-law says when he's working in the woods in rural Quebec, the flies will hone in on him for the first five minutes or so until he works up a bit of a sweat, and then they leave him alone. And he adds that if a black fly ends up in the mouth, the best bet is to gulp it down and not waste time trying to spit the sucker out, because they don't come out in one piece.
I don't think we have them here. I'm surprised at how few mosquitoes are here also.
Not much of any kind of bugs here that pester me. Or it may be that I'm so ornery that they stay away from me, ha ha ha.
Always running into spider webs though, lots of them here.
It sure has been nice weather for this time of year, last year it seemed like it rained all frigging spring.
well tis an interesting bit of trivia regarding Rural Maine---it never ceases to amaze me that people actually voluntarily choose to live there----hmmph, guess it takes all kinds right?
I've come to believe that the blackflies and later on the mosquitoes and yes the mingies sorta make a trade. They give us something important in exchange for some of our blood. They give us tiny doses of immunity to all the local diseases. It's sorta like flue shots but in much smaller doses. So us locals who get bit every year can do pretty well up here in the Maine Woods. But a flatlander who doesn't get these infusions on a regular basis can be hit pretty hard by these little flying woods doctors. Which brings up another benefit of having these things around. They tend to keep the flatlanders away. Now I know that isn't good in a Chamber of Commerce sort of way, but hey, there's only one traffic light in the whole town of Greenville and even that is just a flasher. Praise the Lord for blackflies!
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