|
|
In June when the sun finally came out and the temperature got above 55°F you had a tough time with the blackflies (Family Simuliidae, genus Simulium, a dipteran [having an anterior and posterior wing on either side of its body]). They bothered you in the yard, and in the garden, by the lakeshore and in the woods, and on the warm, dusty dirt. They bit you and they swarmed you. If you’re like me, they got in into your ears and eyes and hair and up under your caps and around your ankles and wrists. Like other insects they are attracted to the tear ducts and mucus of the eye. Like how the ticks gather around the pup’s ocular glands at the eyebrows.
Do not mistake them for the non-biting midges (Chironomids; ‘midge’ cognate with Latin musca, meaning ‘fly’) down at the stillwater, although the midges – in their even thicker swarms – can make breathing difficult and could cause anxiety from the overstimulation when you stand inside the cloud and hear them in the dark.
The mosquitoes (Family Culiecidae) can be bad, especially down in the shaded, humid trout creek bottoms. But American mosquitoes are big and slow and dumb. You can kill them easily. In the Third World they are small and quick and cunning and lethal. Still, the mosquitoes are not as bad as what they used to be. In the old days up on the Flute Reed River in our old log cabin my Uncle George would bring inside the big neon-blue bug zapper and hang it from the beam over the cold black stove, and we would sleep like that to the sound of mosquitoes frying and with the blue neon zapper like a very bright nightlight in the blind dark of the woods.
People ask me advice about the bugs. They don’t much seem to like what I have to advise. Saturating my clothes – all my clothes – in Ben’s permethrin on May 1st and then on June 1st; it is washable and lasts a month. DEET. Maximum DEET. Like ordering extra MSG at a Chinese restaurant. Using Bounce sheets in each dryer-load of clothes. The smell of Bounce is said to be a deterrent. Bounce sheets in my back pockets, under my cap, in my collar. No perfume or cologne or aftershave for three months. Scent-free Armand Hammer deodorant. No shampooing of hair. Heck, no soap at all. Just straight rainwater from the 5-gallon bucket or skinny dipping in the lake or water from the well. Only the natural odor of the human body washed with water.
Once at the shop a nice gentleman – a family man – and his 12-year-old boy came up to me, and he had on shorts and a tee, and the boy had on shorts and a tank. And asked me, seriously and with a smile, how they could keep the bugs away. They were going up to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
I stood there looking at them. As in, are you kidding me?
Like this phone call we got at the shop once. Guy on the phone asked me about how to mend a scratch – a scratch! – on his canoe. I was dumb, kind of impatient. Me, I got to worry about open cracks, and gaping holes and rivets popping out of hulls and rotten hulls in boats. I figured my best advice to him was not to canoe anywhere in Cook County, Minnesota, or to get another hobby. A scratch in a canoe is the least of one’s worries.
To the father and son, the opposite. Onward, noble D’Artagnan! But don’t go to the BWCA wearing shorts and T-shirts. Cover every inch of your skin, maybe twice. Blouse your pants. Wear leather gloves even in the heat and bright sun. Bring head nets. Start smoking cigarettes; smoke to scatter the bugs and use the red-hot tips to burn any bites (it works). Spray DEET on your face (carefully). If you ain’t inhaling a little or tasting it on your lips, you ain’t using it enough.
Sometimes nothing works, even for me. And I stop weeding in the garden, or I hike up the steep slope over the creek and out. That’s sometimes. Most of the times I play a mental game and focus on not focusing on bugs. Insects got to live, same as the worms and spiders and bats and swallows and buzzards and brook trout. To paraphrase Josey Wales.
Leave a Reply