OK, so the hottest topic on my blog today was this post about the (then) approaching greenhead season. No comments, but the most hits of any other individual post.
As anyone who reads regularly knows, the greenheads are now here. Right here, in my porch. All of them.
Triple-D was laughing her ass off at me from her deck yesterday as I was swatting madly at the greenheads congregated on the screen of one of the windows (most of the others along the front I don't open because there are no screens on them).
I like it when they congregate - sometimes I can kill several of them with one swat!
Fortunately, for whatever reason, they don't come all the way into the house. Unlike the horse flies, which are not easily killed with one blow from the swatter and in any case are much harder to catch off guard (so to speak). Greenheads are just plain dumb.
I usually have the attitude of "live and let live" with insects (as I already mentioned). But I can't abide flies. I heard somewhere the other day that they pee something like once every 5 seconds. I just love getting up on my stool and cleaning the fly specks off the (white) beams in the main room.
It's so attractive.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
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Which comment reminds me. Many years ago, we moved into an old house (the new part was added about 1750). The old, hand-hewn beams were exposed. Some idiot in the past had whitewashed them. (Maybe you can imagine how hard that was to remove.) The whitewash had faded to a patchy mess. My late (very proper) mother-in-law looked up and said, "What is all that white stuff?" Our contractor (starting the first of many, many projects) looked up and replied, "Probably fly shit."
Last weekend while relaxing at the Sandy Point beach at the southern tip of Plum Island, I shot this macro photograph of a greenhead resting on my ankle.
Ugly critter. Until that day, I'd never seen them. I'm itching myself just thinking.
Thanks, Ari! I was going to take a picture of the squished greenheads that I'd swatted but thought better of it.
Dick,
Great anecdote. What did your mother-in-law say or do then, do you remember?
My mother-in-law simply said, "oh" and changed the subject. She never understood why we wanted to live in such a "fixer-upper" (nor, did I, now that I think of it; Nanci loves those projects). Nanci's sister kept referring to "my sister, the pilgrim".
UGH! "Fixer-uppers" and "do-it-yourself" - my dad bought a lot of those! I was plastering and sanding dry wall at age 10 ... that house you referred to sounds interesting, though.
My home repair abilities are limited to those necessary to write checks. The house is the 2nd oldest in that part of the world, and comes complete with a ghost or two. I never saw one, but a couple of the kids did, and the folks we bought it from had a number of stories.
Ghosts?! I love ghosts! ... We had one, in our house in Flint. That was more a case of hearing it (coming down the stairs) than seeing it, though my mother used to see it (or one) every so often.
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