What's Bugging You?

The flycatchers and buntings are not the only creatures to show up in Arkansas each Spring. Back come mosquitoes,chiggers, ticks and the dirty little bastard known as the buffalo gnat.

http://entoplp.okstate.edu/ddd/insects/blackflies.htm

"Simuliidae is a small family of blood sucking flies commonly known as black flies or buffalo gnats"

Of course, I'd heard tales of blackflies growing up, with my mental image being one of Boundary Waters fisherman with head nets. That was true until 12-15 years ago when I suffered from a very painful knot of a bug bite on my neck while fishing at our place on the Little Red River. My brother said, "Buffalo gnat." I said.....well, I'm on a self-imposed cuss-quota, so I'll just say that I forcefully expressed my displeasure. Since then, I've been bled by them on the Buffalo, made miserable on the Mulberry, ravaged on Richland Creek......it seems they've taken over.Needless to say, that includes the River Trail. I think it's kind of like my experience with poison ivy. I had never reacted to it, but then got it a few times and learned to look for it. Once I learned to recognize it, I realized that it's Arkansas's most common groundcover.

I thought buffalo gnats had to have recently migrated, but in researching this post I found this Time article from 1934:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,787828,00.html

"Great black clouds of insects hummed softly over eastern Arkansas last week. Above waiting fields the sun rose higher each day but on many a farm spring planting had stopped dead. Some farmers tied smudge-fire buckets to their plows, tried to go ahead. Others gave up, herded their livestock into barns, circled them with smudges. Still others, too late, found their horses and mules choked, sucked, poisoned. By the week's end nearly 1,000 horses & mules lay dead in their tracks, and desperate farmers were crying to Red Cross and Government for relief.
The deadly clouds were buffalo gnats (simuliidae) so called not because they attack buffaloes but because they have humps on their backs. "

I haven't lost any livestock to them, but the bite is very painful to many of us, Diane and I included. While the discomfort of a mosquito bite can typically be alleviated by a long hot shower, the bite of the buffalo gnat lingers. It makes a knot that burns, itches, and hurts for several days and often takes a week or more to totally subside. These are not the soft, slow flying swarms that we regularly eat, breath and collect on our skin for that dirty windshield look. These are stealth fighters. They come in low, launch on their target and are gone before the victims even know they are struck. Favored target areas seem to be the neck and head, particularly the nape of the neck and the area behind the ears, though any bare skin is fair game.

Insect repellents don't help much. DEET is probably your best bet, but don't count on it.

Vanilla is said to help, but my results with it have been questionable. My best advice is just to keep riding!

I'm sharing this because I've spoken to many victims who were unaware of what had bitten them. If you're one of those folks, you now have a target for your vitriole.