Cold Blooded Suckers

In less than an hour I had 1033 words written, not including the words I cut. Great morning, so I strolled over to Higher Ground Caffee located in the Saratoga Springs Library and got a Green Mountain Coffee. Hazelnut decaf. Then decided to write this crap.

I can’t get out of bed in the morning to go run when it is 52 degrees. There is little incentive to douse myself with Deet (nothing else works and still the hardiest of deer flies persistently buzz me looking for a vunerable piece of flesh), and trot down the road knowing that the first sip of coffee is going to shatter my teeth when hot meets cold. “I’ll just eat a little less”, I tell Diablo who’s been snoozing under the covers in the little pocket of warmth between my arm and torso.

Of course I am being a wimp about the cold and the bugs. Two weeks ago when we had four days of summer the deer flies emerged. Those son-of-a-bitches.

Fighting the biting insects in Upstate New York is like battling a prolonged and coordinated offense. Spring arrives and black fly swarms chase anything that moves. As kids, My sister and I would lie on our backs on the front porch with our feet raised in the air. The stupid pests would hover around our red Buster Browns and white ankle socks looking for an easy meal. Unbeknown to them we’d snap our baseball gloves, the leather webbing pocketing a half dozen menaces quicker than Willie Mayes could run down a fly ball.

As the damp spring ground becomes saturated, muddy puddles birth the mosquito. These blood thirsty beasts are so large they leave drool on the screen door. My older brother showed me how we could tempt the mosquito to push its proboscis through the mesh in search of meal. With patience and the warped mind of a delinquent, we’d pinch the sticker with our little fingers. Sick, but in a strange way, justifiable. I still ask God what that creation was all about.

Once the warm weather tumbles over the mountains to settle into the Hudson Valley the nasty biting deer and horse flies are unleashed on every warm blooded creature this side of hell. The bite is painful and its side effects last nearly a week after the wound has been inflicted. During last week’s heat wave, I got nailed in the back on the neck, near the shoulder. People mistook me for Quasimodo the welt was so large. And itch… The best way to eradicate the deer fly is to snag them out of the air, crush them in your hand and then stomp on the remains. Or just stay inside.

Don’t get me started on chiggers. Never seen one. Those little buggers are from the deep cold voids of outer space. It would explain this weather!