SPRING, and THE FLIES! By Ralph Bice

                From June 6, 1979

I imagine there are still a few who many years ago had to memorize a springtime poem in the senior third book (now grade 7). Gardeners are busy and soon there will be talk of cut worms, bugs, groundhogs and all the things that spoil the thrill of watching your garden grow. Best of all everyone seems to have forgotten those storms of last winter, the huge piles of snow and the cold. But after the warm weather comes there are so many other things to think about that last winter is right where it belongs, and that is in the past. Maybe the nice weather of June was put there to make those cold days seem so far away.

 Open water brought the usual crowd of fishermen and it will continue until the season ends. So many out enjoying getting around in boats and canoes enjoying the lakes. Have seen a few hardy souls swimming but the water must be cold.

Along with canoeing and boating we can look for more accidents. Already there have been some accidents in Algonquin Park and two or three lives lost. So many treat canoes with no respect. Many canoes are made today with those strips of foam on the side, and they do make the craft safer. It also makes beginners trust their canoes too much. “I have never heard of an accident where a canoe is concerned where it was the canoe’s fault.” As long as we have people treating canoes as if they are toys we can look for accidents.

Last season there was a suggestion that would-be canoe trippers pass a test and be issued a certificate before they were allowed a travel permit. It would keep a lot of people out of the woods. One group of outfitters are working against such an edict.

And, of course, with this fine weather we have the flies and mosquitoes. And the yearly complaints about the bites. Like the snow we tend to forget once they are gone. I was given a copy of a paper printed in Lawrence, Mass., and they have flies there too. Only ours are not quite so militant. This paper carried a story of a motorist who claimed the mosquitoes punctured his tires.

Then there is the story made public during the last war. In Alaska, where the mosquitoes are much larger, at one of the refueling stops service men put ten gallons of high octane gas on something that landed on the ramp before they discovered it was a large mosquitoe.

Years ago, on the Pine River, a fire ranger, Bill Ryan, claims he saw a flock of mosquitoes land in the yard behind the keep-over barn and fly away with a small pig. But what did amaze him was just as they cleared the tree tops he heard one say, “Where can we put this so the big boys cannot find it?”

One of the very oldest park rangers told me years ago that once away back in the woods in the days before screens and dope bombs, the only place he found that was safe was under a large iron pot, one he used to boil sap in. With a bit of a depression in the earth and the pot pulled over he had comfort for a few evenings. Then one really bad evening he heard a different hum and he knew that the larger type of mosquitoe had been sent for. Soon they were diving at the pot and he said it sounded like small stones thrown on a tin roof. Then he noticed that some of the stingers were actually penetrating the cast iron pot. With a sly grin he picked up a stone and began clinching the stingers on the inside of the pot. That was his undoing for he riveted so many to the pot that they flew away with it.

So, when the flies and mosquitoes bite remember it will not last for too long and just hope none of the really large ones show up.

                                                 Damn the Black Flies

                               Midget and black flies, Oh Lord how they bite,

                               From early in the morning, to late in the night.

                               They buzz in your ears, they crawl in your nose,

                                And anywhere they can find room for their toes.

                    

                               They mess up your glasses, and dig in your eyes,

                                In swarms so immense they will darken the skies.

                                One thing in their favour, at least that I know,

                                I’m glad they are not as big as a crow.

 

                                 They rise from the ground, on a hill or the level,

                                  I think they were made to be pets of the Devil.

                                  If such is the case, just as true as the sun,

                                  I wish he would call them to him – every one.

                                  When I’m placed in my grave, with dirt stomped in my eyes,

                                   I hope at last to escape – those very BLACK FLIES!