Let me start by admitting that I'm not a scientist. I once auditioned to play one, as an 'extra' in a TV commercial, but I didn't look scientific enough I guess.
On my latest fishing adventure however, I did make a discovery.
Bugs seem to like artifical light, my blood and nine year old bug spray. Little did I know at the time, but I unwittingly put together the perfect tri-fecta for getting eaten alive while persuing my favorite pasttime of catching weeds.
The conditions were perfect No wind, the sun had set and I was at the waters edge wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt. Beautiful!
I'm not sure why, buy I theorize that the fish, which were beginning to jump all over lake in front of me, scared all the bugs to shore. That's when things got out of control.
Now, I've never been one to exaggerate, but I've been in hot air balloons smaller than the swarm surrounding me and my trusty headlamp right then. It was time to fight back with a good application of DEET to defend my personal space from those tiny predators.
My light shining brightly, I rifled through my tackle bag and found my trusty pest repellant that has migrated my many backpacks and tackle boxes for as long as I've had my old grey dog.
I furiously ejected it's contents onto my body. I finally felt safe and went back to catching weeds cast after cast. Good old bug spray!
Little did I know, the flying marauders were retreating and calling in reinforcements.
They knew what they were doing. I fell for their tactiic slapping myself in the face repeatedly. Resistance was futile, but I was not about to succumb. I had barely caught any weeds yet and the evening was still young.
It was time to turn my headlight on super-duper high power and move. But somehow they were able to follow me. This is when things got dire.
Time to fight em off with good old fashioned FIRE!
It didn't take long for me to realize that I needed a different plan. Fighting a blimp size swarm of biting bugs is a process and the scientist in me suddenly realized this.
Exhausted from running up and down the shoreline trying to keep my Bic lit, which doesn't stay lit when you're running, FYI, to escape the onslaught the swarm had launched, I knew it was me or them.
All that was left to do was try to spot an aircraft by running in a figure-8 and scream bloody murder as fast as I could.
If you've ever noticed that when you run and scream at the same time a lot of bugs end up in your mouth. I don't care what you say, but they really have no taste at all. At least the few thousand I managed to take out.
I wish I'd have thought of eating them sooner, since that scared the rest of the herd away. Now I know bugs don't fly in 'herds' but I also know bananas come in 'bunches'.
Some things I do know is that old bug spray may hold sentimental value but doesn't work, you want to keep your blood for your own use and headlamps are evil. Especailly at night.
'THAT GUY'
(a.k.a.: badcoyotee)
