Gibberish: Spring – flowers and fisticuffs

It’s spring time again.

This (youngish) girl’s thoughts lightly turn to pink sunrises, green buds, delicate flowers bursting forth, sweet scents in the air – and mass destruction.

There’s a reason for that: it’s because nature does not play fair.

Face it, we only have two real seasons in Canada: winter and road work.

Yet, on the very day we can actually slog off those huge winter parkas and slip outside to enjoy the warm sun, we fall under immediate attack.

Is it part of some great cosmic joke, when we start exposing huge amounts of pale, wintery skin, that galaxies of mosquitoes, horseflies, black flies, deerflies and shad flies spontaneously burst into existence?

To say nothing of the emergence of ants, ticks and spiders.

At my house, once spring raises its “bonny head”, it’s time to go into combat mode, hauling out my personal select weapons of mass destruction.

Try sitting on your front porch  on any summery day in the late afternoon.

I can guarantee that the precise moment you sink into the lounge, with an ‘ahh’ of pleasure, mosquitoes activate a radar network – one that even NATO would envy – in the immediate neighbourhood.

Literally within seconds, demonstrating a Kamikaze fanaticism, squadrons of  mosquitoes will zero in (unfortunate pun), when the message, “plus size target sighted,” is blasted over teeny receivers.

Passing motorists are regularly treated to what looks like a particularly frenzied style of impromptu break dancing taking place right on the front steps as I vainly try to ‘repel boarders’.

And yet, no matter how many mosquitoes one massacres, it is impossible to win.

By late spring, I won’t go outside unless I am cloaked in a fog of OFF. From early May until late October, my perfume of choice is Eau de BugBegone, (which doesn’t make me popular in crowded cars and trains).

And if mosquito hordes aren’t enough, there’s also plagues of black flies set to destroy anyone who ventures outdoors with sun tan oil.

I really feel that the conflict with black flies is a true war – a genuine case of me or them. I smash and slap and gas black flies at every opportunity.

But one can still lose.

I was hanging out on a friend’s second floor balcony one balmy spring day, helping (watching) him paint the house trim, when a monstrous black fly attacked.

The creature lunged at me out of nowhere. I ducked. We sparred several times around the deck, weaving and whacking and jabbing ferociously.

Suddenly the black fly found an opening in my windmill defence and charged. Direct hit.

Clutching my throat, I yelled out (a la the late Jimmy Cagney), “He got me, the dirty rat!”

While a mosquito leaves you with an annoying itch, a black fly leaves you with a hideous welt and a case of obscenity.

After I finally settled down, I noticed that my friend on the ladder was calmly holding up a sign with 8.5 technique, 9.5 performance painted on it.

I had a run in with some yellow-jackets a week ago. They won. Which brings me to spiders.

I will give Eastern Ontario this much: we have one of the finest, largest and most varied collections of spiders in the world.

Very few of them are poisonous, fortunately, and most of them are incapable of carrying off puppies.

And honestly, I truly appreciate the good work many spiders do. It’s a case of “Yeah, Team Spider!” when I spot a mosquito or black fly falling into their nets.

However, it is a fact that many spiders can be somewhat unpleasant creatures.

One must hose down and scrub down windows, brick and stone work, on a daily basis, just to prevent the homestead from vanishing under a cloud of webs.

And there is nothing more disconcerting than to casually fall asleep on the deck lounge chair and awaken to find oneself, like Gulliver, staked out with webs.

There are spiders locally so huge and grotesque, they appear to have escaped from the set of some grainy black and white 1950’s B movies like THEM.

Consequently, all summer I keep big cans of Spider Blast and a really large swatter near to hand. (Who’s to say spiders haven’t also been watching THEM or ATTACK OF THE MUTANT CRAWLERS, and been getting ideas!)

So I say, let us all thoroughly enjoy these next warm, sunny months  sitting outside, clad in our  now traditional Canadian summer wear: long-sleeved flannel shirts, full-length, thick pants, sturdy boots, gloves, and jungle helmets draped with netting.

After all, once winter rolls around, we’ll have to put on heavy clothing again, right?