Thursday October 7 2010
Imagine your arms are pinned to your sides, and little bugs are swarming your ears, biting, biting, biting - and the noise! Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. It would be maddening. You have to shake your head every 5 seconds. Your ears get so sensitive from the bites - they itch yet they hurt - that you don't want them touched, even to have bug ointment put in them.
The buffalo gnats have been horrible the last few days here in Owyhee. Must be the mild fall weather - which has not yet gotten even the slightest bit cool enough to change a single tree leaf yellow. The gnats need a good freeze (several actually, or else they'll just come back) - but there's nothing promising in the forecast yet.
I've heard that the gnats are an invasive species that weren't around during the pioneer days. One small thing they didn't even know they had to be thankful for. Of course, they were worrying about bigger things like marauding Indians (and the Indians were worrying about marauding white men), but I still think the Oregon Trail folks and livestock would be happy if they had known they didn't have these evil little bastards to deal with.
I hate those things. They are immune to everything. Where's a good bat colony when you need 'em?
ReplyDeleteI hate bugs!! At least any kind of bug that annoys my horses. Fly masks with ears are the only solution for this, but you have a whole herd of horses, so that's totally impractical.
ReplyDeleteCould you hire a bunch of servants with palm fronds to stand around fanning them??? *Sigh*
Poor babies.
In Pennsylvania we are swarmed by gnats. Our two boys have the fly masks with ears, but their bellies are still attacked. I hate bugs. One nice thing about the cool temperatures - no bugs!
ReplyDeleteLooks awful.
ReplyDeleteWe are rid of flies and mosquitos here, but have another plague - the deer fly.
It flies, lands on the body of the horse, loses the wings and creeps into the fur and bites. Can make the horse very stressed and sometimes close to panicking.
So I guess the winter has its highlights?
I wsh the FLY's would just DIE already.. Enough.
ReplyDelete