C'mon Man. As a nineth-generation Mainer you know I have to rise to defend the mosquito. Everyone knows that the mosquito is the Maine State Bird. Actually lots of states have a problem with mosquitos. But the Maine black fly mixed in with them is a special kind of hell up country. They are not as big a problem along the coast. They also have two breeding cycles in the spring/summer in the northern half of Maine and only one further south. The little fuckers are like kamikaze pilots. Black flies doing what they do best. I have seen much worse.
The last 3 days were just brutal. 20 degrees below normal and very windy. But I guess Mother Nature feels guilty. We'll be going from February to June in just a few days. All in early April. I'll take it.
jnbadger, don't put away the snowblower yet. I just emptied mine and packed it away in the shed, so pretty much guaranteed more snow.
We've got yellow flies from now until the end of July. These little bastards fly about twice as fast as a regular fly and they bite you the instant they land on you. I got bit on the hand when I first moved to Orlando and my hand swelled up to twice the normal size. These days I'm pretty much immune because I've been bit so many times, but the bites still hurt like hell the moment they happen.
Yep. Immunity is a thing. Even short term immunity. In Maine, the first bites of the season were brutal on the dogs and their exposed underbellies. They would swell up very badly where they had been bitten. As the season progressed their reaction was not as strong. But the next year they had to start from scratch again.
Hmm,never heard of yellow flies,glad we dont have them in Texas,at least I've never seen one. Just vicious chiggers around here.
This where I live (Romania, Eastern Europe): This is where I go in vacation: Crete, Greece. Essentially the same latitude as Florida. I was looking at Baron's photos and thinking to myself "why I can tell this is not Greece?". Nice. But not Greece
I'd love to visit both Romania and Greece one day. The downside of Florida versus other vacation destinations like Greece is that there are no mountains or hills. So although the beaches in Florida are definitely nice, it will never have the same scenic magic as a place with a lot of topographical variations.
Ahh, the gadfly. I grew up in the countryside btw. So these gadflies will gather around cattle herds but humans are not on their usual menu so it was pretty safe to be around horses, cows etc, they'd go for them and not for me. On the rare occasion they'd target me while alone, I'd usually feel them before they had a chance to suck much if anything out of me. A slap and one fly less. But indeed if they bite, it will swell terribly for a day or two. Only very rarely I recall being bitten. Now that you're pointing it out, it might have been immunity. Never thought of it back then.