Groundhogs, Cigars, And Deet Jim Mize
the need for more advanced insect repellants long before they existed. As teenagers, my cousin and I used to wander scenic mountain mead- ows with our rifles helping to keep groundhogs from digging leg traps for dairy cows. Besides the cows, we never found ourselves alone. Inevita- bly, as soon as we stopped walking and set up our shooting positions, we were joined by a convention of gnats. No human has ever seen a single
Hunting groundhogs several
gnat; gnats are always plural. They are the bug versions of junk mail, always showing up uninvited. These winged warts of the woods would converge on us willy-nilly in such a cloud that I always expected it to rain. My cousin, being a year older,
had a remedy that he finally con- vinced me to try. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out two cigars and handed one to me. “Light it,” he said. “Just puff
smoke and don’t inhale. Gnats hate these things.” Willing to do anything for some
relief, I unwrapped the cigar. These were not fine Cuban smokes or any- thing close. I had seen the box. These were Spanish rum-flavored cigars that came with a matador’s widow on the box. After I lit mine, I knew how he had died.
Waving this crooked tobacco
wand in the air, I forced the gnats to back off. Encouraged, I took another puff and blew more smoke in their direction. The next thing I learned is that
contrary to Presidential opinion, you do have to inhale to keep these things lit. This presents another problem, since I’m convinced that cigars that are used for insect repellant were never meant to be inhaled. The first symptom I experienced was heightened sensitivity. At least,
Page 174 October — December 2011 decades ago, I discovered
that’s what I thought it was because I could feel the earth rotating. Next, my stomach started rotat-
ing with it. Hundreds of miles from the ocean, I could still feel the swelling and falling of the tides. Then my head began to pound as
if my heart was pumping blood only to my temples. So I fell backwards, face up, and offered myself whole to the gnats. I surrendered. Ever since, I have appreciated
the advancements in insect repellant technology. Scientists who develop insect repellant have saved a gen- eration from Spanish cigars. But they have their work cut out for them, as gnats and mosquitoes are worthy adversaries. Take gnats, for instance. Gnats
are almost too small to see. If you look at gnats under a microscope, I suspect you will see they are carrying tiny McCulloch chain saws. That would at least explain the whining. The whine of a gnat is just barely
within the range of sounds humans can hear. Now I know how the family dog felt whenever the three-year-old found the silent whistle. Gnats have an annoying habit of
flying into orifices. Sometimes I think they like to go into both of my ears at once so they can hear their whine echo across the void between. When you get a gnat in your
ear, it never seems to quit crawling or whining. It’s like the cartoon whose little devil sits on your shoulder giving you bad ideas. If you played a gnat’s whining backward, it’s probably say- ing something like, “Drive off a cliff, eat a hundred Twinkies, and buy a CD by Barry Manilow.” The other place gnats love to
crawl is into your eye. Having one under your eyelid is like having a grain of beach sand in there. Up until that time, who knew there were sharp edges on a gnat?
Unfortunately for ground-
hog hunters, gnats flourish in cow pastures. Maybe it’s the cows, the swampy spots, or even the manure. On the other hand, they might just like a good steak. But perhaps gnats have a purpose. Who’s to say that the aliens that are always accused of mutilating cows weren’t run off by gnats? For all we know, gnats might have saved the planet. But I have learned one thing
about scouting for places to hunt groundhogs. When you drive through the country and see friendly people wave at you, they are not being friendly; they’re swooshing at gnats. You had best keep driving. Mosquitoes, if anything, are
worse even than gnats. Basically, mos- quitoes are gnats with teeth. Maybe they are just older gnats and their teeth finally came in. Or perhaps they are really vampire gnats. For both of these critters, I am
a big fan of anything that helps curb their numbers. That includes bats, Venus fly traps, and electric bug zap- pers. So it’s no wonder I’ve come to appreciate insect repellant. Insect repellants have come a
long way. The first I used came from an army surplus store and had a plain white label. I put some on my forehead once to keep gnats out of my eyes. When I started to sweat, the insect repellant ran into my eyes and drove me blind. I wandered downhill until I hit water and rinsed them out. When I opened my eyes, I was thrilled to find I’d not washed my face in runoff from a septic tank, though at the time, it wouldn’t have mattered. Whatever this stuff was, it was
potent. I quit putting it on my skin and just applied it directly to my cap and camo shirt. It proceeded to kill the vegetation on my camo. By the time I got home, I had a mesh hat and a khaki shirt with extra button holes.
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