North Channel Blog for Thursday July 28 2011
These Bugs Really Bug Me
We were visited by the Bug Faerie overnight. Overnight? Who am I kidding? The little buggers (pun intended) are still with us, en masse. We’ve heard about boats being covered, in inches, by these little knats or no-see-ums, as the Canadians refer to them as, but we’ve not experienced it….yet. This morning comes close.
Capt. SO and I arose early, eagerly looking forward to dropping a hook off the back of the Aqua RV and possibly catching tonight’s perch dinner, instead of last night’s perch appetizer. He went out the door first, only to be heard whispering, “This is not good!” I came to the screen and he said, “Come out quickly.” while at the same time swinging his arms madly to and fro, up and down. I went out as fast as I could, only to find myself enmeshed in a swarming mob of tiny, flying insects, so thick that I’m certain we inhaled some with each breath. After walking just a few yards, the bottoms of our once-clean feet were covered with stuck-on carcasses that mere hand-rubbing could not dislodge.
“Icky”, I thought to myself. I might have even uttered something to that effect aloud.
Every square inch of the Aqua RV is covered – and I do mean every square inch. Where there are troughs of any kind, the dead knats lie piled together, an inch thick. That is just the deceased ones. The live ones continue to fly in swarms so thick that the swarm appears as a small, dark cloud.
“Icky”, I thought to myself……and still do.
I told Capt. SO that we need to pull anchor and take this thing up to thirty knots, letting the wind sweep them naturally away. Then the clean-up can begin.
Oh, yeah. I just killed a spider in the living area.
“Icky!”
Ancora imparo
