Flies and Mosquitos and Gnats, Oh My!

I bet you sang that in your head, didn'tcha?

Bugs.

They are back from the hell they were sent too when winter hit last year.

And they are pissed.

I can’t stand flies. And before you say the obvious, yes, this is a farm. Yes, we have a lot of poop. Yes, flies adore poop. Yes, I do my best to kill those suckers.

Unfortunately, my tractor is still broken so I am very far behind on scraping the sheep corral so that it dries out and those things die. Stay tuned for my adventure in rebuilding a carburetor, and hope that fixes it’s problem.

We have several fly traps up at the moment. 4 of them around the stock tanks. Two of them are almost full and will need to be changed out this coming week.

That is 4 weeks of fly catching. Can you imagine the living hell it would be if they were loose?

But for some reason, the really big flies, which look like they were raised in a hot nuke zone, are dive bombing my hair then burrow in and sit there and BZZZZZZ BZZZZZZ BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ around until I do the crap-it’s-in-my-hair dance and swat the damn thing out.

Now, please understand, I am allergic to wasp stings, so when something hits my head and starts making noise, it’s an almost total freak out on my part with visions of impending death in my brain. I do have epi pens but I don’t always have one in my pocket.

These suckers are even doing strafing runs while I’m in the house. There is nothing quite so enjoyable as sitting on the toilet and have one of these miniature bat’s out of hell start to harass you while you are in a position you can not leave to get the swatter. I apparently need to strategically place swatters around the house.

Speaking of swatters, have you seen the new ones they are making now? Nice thick plastic, bigger heavier handle, and they don’t do squat!!! Give me one of those thin flexible ones with the wire handle that sings thru the air with the siren of death blaring as it descends upon the offending critter. Now THAT’s a fly swatter! Oh yeah! Those were the best and incredibly hard to find anymore. I think it’s a government conspiracy to keep them from us.

And the mosquitos. Oy Vey!! I want to publicly thank the county road dept for clearing out the edges of the culvert that runs under my driveway. In doing so you created a wonderful habitat for these prehistorically huge flying blood suckers. Kudo’s to you for your effort in pond creation and swamp building.

And before you state the obvious, yes, this is a farm. Yes, we have stock tanks. Yes, they are full of water. However, I dump and scrub those out every few days just to keep the dang things from having orgies in them and tormenting us with their ongoing breeding program. I swear the culvert is like Studio 54 at it’s heyday.

I do actually have electric bug zappers in the house just to keep those SOB’s from their ongoing nightly zzzzzzzzz in your ear torment, leading to no sleep, and a very cranky sheep farmer the next morning. It’s a very satisfying sound to hear the zapper nail one. Boom! Score!

I swear, some of these above bugs are big enough to carry off a small child or a lamb. I wonder if the Fukashima cloud has made it over here and is creating these monsters. Now, if it is, I would hope that it would use it’s power for good. Like making bigger bug eating bugs vs making bigger people eating bugs. Rob always said it’s bigger in Wyoming. However he neglected to mention the big bug part, probably cus he knew it would be a NO F’ING WAY from me. Seriously, I’ll take -52 windchills over bugs any day.

Onto the gnats. Back east, where I am originally from, they call them no-see-ums. Same bug, same problem. Sorta. Along the lines of it’s bigger in Wyoming, comes the things that FLY INTO YOUR DAMN EAR WHILE YOU ARE SLEEPING AND DO A DANCE ON YOUR EAR DRUM.

I kid you not.

It’s happened about 5 times in 4 years to me. You’re sound asleep, dreaming of sugarplums and all sorts of other nice things. The faint sound of a buzzing penetrates your brain. Then it happens. Before you can coherently react.

The friggen thing is in your ear.

And I mean IN YOUR EAR! Beating a tattoo reminiscent of a fife and drum corp marching in a parade.

And it hurts, no doubt about it.

You bound out of bed and make a mad dash for the bathroom and the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Drown that sucker before it makes you stark raving mad. That’s it’s goal, to make you stark raving mad.

They are good at their job too. They have the whole process down pat. In little gnat school, they compare notes on the best way to do this and who has the highest stark-raving-mad score.

Your only option is to make sure they don’t make it out of your ear alive. Or don’t get in there to start with. It’s so squicky to have those things in there that I have the heebie-jeebies for days afterwards. I know I flushed it out, but it’s like phantom pain, and you still feel their little feet and wings doing the John Travolta Saturday Night Fever dance against your eardrum. I’ve slept with cotton balls in my ears just to thwart their ongoing war against humanity and sanity.

If it’s not your ears they are targeting, it’s your eyes. Getting one of those suckers fly into your eye is a whole new level of hell that Dante would be proud of. Ugh. Thankfully wearing glasses keeps some of them out.

Now, if they miss your ear while your sleeping, or your eye while your working, they will for sure go for your mouth. And I think they intentionally glue themselves to your tonsils. 10 mins of trying to hack those suckers out only results in a very sore throat, and the gnat happily stuck where he landed. You will be tasting that thing for a week! I recommend copious amounts of adult beverage such as Skrewball to remove that offending bastard. You will either wash the bug and the taste out, or you will be happy enough not to care anymore.

I’m so over these bugs, and it’s still only June. How will I ever get thru the rest of the summer without being put into a strait jacket??? Where’s a praying Mantis when you need about 1000 of them???

F’ing bugs!

I wish all of you a happy and Blessed Solstice today! Blessed Be.