George Orwell knew all about dictators and nasty things that happen in totalitarian regimes, but he didn’t know squat about bugs, or husbands, and I do not conflate the two as one of my intimate acquaintance is wont to do. Let me tell you something about bugs, especially the unpleasant kind that invade bedrooms at night and whine about as they search for a nice surface blood vessel to land on for a meal. It’s the women who do that, in the mosquito world at any rate, and if Orwell had written 1984 anywhere in mosquito country instead of that godforsaken island in the Hebrides, he would have known that and not made such a silly mistake in the plot. Here it is.
Winston Smith, the hero of the novel, has a love affair with Julia. Every student of every senior class ever afflicted with the study of the book cheers for the couple who, in a horrible dehumanizing world, have found true love. Finally caught by the agents of Big Brother, Winston can defiantly proclaim to his nemesis, “You can’t make me stop loving her”. The cheers in the classrooms are almost audible. Then come the rats in Room 101.
Remember the rats. Big Brother says that everyone has some deep fear that, once triggered, will reduce the sufferer to a compliant wreck of humanity who will do anything for release from the terror.
“With you it’s rats,” he tells Winston and shows him the contraption in Room 101 that he will attach to the poor sod’s head – a cage affair with little doors that can be opened to allow starving rats to spring on Winston’s face and start eating.
Winston screams in terror, “No! Do it to Julia. Do it to Julia!”
And that, according to Orwell, constitutes Winston’s capitulation in that he is willing to sacrifice his beloved in order to escape a gruesome fate. He really can’t maintain he has a deeply loving relationship with someone he’s just offered up for torture in his place, when really that happens all the time in this real world of ours. Back to the bugs.
You can look it up in books on mosquito life cycles and feeding habits and all those sorts of fascinating bug facts if you like, but here’s the short version. Female mosquitoes suck blood, nice warm-bodied mammalian blood preferably. The males don’t. Also this blood sucking thing is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for momma mosquito. One shot is all she wants.
Now to the point. There you are lying sleepily in bed in cabin or tent after a full day of splashing around lakes, thrashing the water with fly line to frighten fish to death, and you hear the mosquito and you know she’s coming for you. It has to be a she because only the female wants your blood and her mate is off somewhere doing reasonable male things like slurping fermented plant juice or sleeping. What can you do?
Now pause a moment here and consider. The bug will bite. Someone. You can switch on the lights and make a great ruckus of an attack with rolled-up newspaper and aerosol spray, but that will only annoy the hell out of your beloved who is trying to sleep next to you. There should be some action that will satisfy the mosquito, thereby ending its annoying whine in your ear, some small action that can be done quietly to resolve the feeding needs of the bug and the sleeping needs of yourself. Do you see it? Here it is.
Snuggle down in the sheets or sleeping bag, pulling same over your head and mouth this mantra: “Do it to her. Do it to her.”
That would handle the mosquito problem; other biting bugs are more persistent. Such as black flies and their international kinfolk. We have black flies in Canada. They bite. And they have relatives around the world. Our Simuliidae are related to no-seeums with the outsized name of Certopogonidae (try that with a mouthful) and over 2,200 other species on the planet. In New Zealand, they call them sand flies but “bloody flesh-eating mini-sauruses” would be more accurate. Like their Canadian relatives, sand fly females need some animal blood to facilitate procreation and they took it in abundance on the west coast of New Zealand from all of us on the bus tour.
There we were, offered a glorious view of the Tasman Sea on the road south from the Franz Joseph Glacier National Park, and we couldn’t wait to climb the conveniently situated lookout tower. Once up, the scratching and swatting started. “Sand flies”, offered our driver who had accompanied us up. I wanted to know why, if they liked sand so bloody much, they didn’t stay down where the stuff was plentiful, but it seemed pointless to ask. We looked about, swatted some more and went down. We were to stay that night at a former highway crew camp, now a lodge for travellers. Hopefully they would have accommodations with fly-proof openings.
One thing they did have was a sense of humour. On the path to the administration building was a small field with a more or less randomly placed set of two posts and a bar across. The sign there said, “Sand fly area. Please close gate.” Well, it was closed, but it didn’t stop the little devils. Our rooms were well screened and the doors closed tightly and all seemed well as long as we didn’t have to venture outside too often.
However, the food service building, and the toilets and the showers were all next to the administration building a fair stumble away, even with a flashlight. Have I mentioned my bladder lately? I thought Beverly might accompany me to hold the flashlight and thereby act as more attractive bait for the little vampires, but she would have none of it and feigned sleep. The usual surreptitious scratching of body parts was quite un-surreptitious at breakfast time.
Our own Canadian Wade Hemsworth composed the most fitting acknowledgement of black fly biting way back in 1949. Here’s his chorus:
And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-pickin' my bones
In North Ontar-eye-o-eye-o, In North Ontar-eye-o
Or in South Island, New Zealand where he didn't have a Julia as a stand-in, nor an Orwell to write his obit.