It’s surprising how much blood can leak from a black fly bite. There’s probably some sort of anticoagulant involved or something. They got me good as I was finishing up the brake job on the car. It’s like they know your hands are busy and can’t swat them. My forearms are covered in red dots from their feast. At least they aren’t potential disease carriers like the ticks I’ve been pulling off. Good thing I’ve found them before they could latch on.
In the next day or two I’ll be dealing with the little beasts as I mow the lawn. Fortunately I’ve got some really decent face masks for the job. Nothing worse than inhaling black flies. Trust me on that. Actually, lawn mowers throw a lot of stuff up in the air that you probably don’t want to breath. There’s all the pollen this time of year, but there’s things like animal droppings that get picked up and dusted around. Yuck.
Maybe this bug season is driving me a little crazy. It’s not even one of the worse years we’ve had. There was the year I was trying to drive home on my motorcycle. My old KZ-900 didn’t have any fairings or even a windshield. That night I had to stop about every 50 miles or so to clean up some bugs. My helmet visor was so splattered that visibility was seriously impaired. Even the headlight had to be regularly cleaned as it was getting dim.
At any rate, it won’t be too long before the black fly season is over. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
-Sixbears