Future releases [2]

{{ Beware the dreaded midge! }}

So a big lab in the middle of midge woods? I'd think if he had any brains he would have jumped in a car.

{{ ohh Halfy, you poor American fool! If only that would work. Midges are very small, you'd need a hermetically sealed car to keep them out, they get in under the windows, through the ventlation, your heating system, between the cracks round the doors. If you are breathing out carbon dioxide, they will find you and feast on your blood in their millions. }}

Oh lord save us. Does England set up a barrier the way America does in Central America?

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1d9w7z7/why_the_us_drops_147_million_worms_on_panama/

{{ No midgies arent so keen on english blood, they prefer pure Highland where they can get it.



and they get everywhere, clothes are no obstacle, theyll be up your trouser legs, up your sleeves, down your neck collar, in round your waist between clothes, your hair will be loaded with them, youll have to try to shake them out like a dog. And every single one of them is biting you and drinking your blood at once. }}

turns out we have them here too, but they don't seem to be nearly the problem. Not as many swamps and bogs. But there's enough I'm surprised they are never discussed here - just mosquitos.

{{ Its not so much marsh or swamps here, though you get them there too, and they need a body of water to hatch from, its just damp they like, and here on the west coast of Scotland wed all be billionares if you could export damp! But they go everywhere, you can be in a wood and under trees they are there, in any long grass they are there, heather is a midgie trap just waiting to devour those careless enough to go into it, the bushes in your garden will be a million midgies thick just waiting on a passing victim. Nowhere is safe.   }}

So these long rambling walks you take are confined to winter, or do you just endure them on most walks?

{{ Oh west coast born, I can handle general background midgie biting without particularly noticing the buggers. When you are in trouble is when youre stuck in one place, say camping, as your sleeping and breathing out lots in a confined space when you wake in the morning to get out the tent, the entire thing will be covered, I mean black all over with millions and millions of midgies trying to get at you- even a native can't take that many. Trick there is you grab some of your stuff get away, pull down bits of tent and get away repeat till you can escape. Burning sticks and waving them can help, smoking can help keep them off your face, but really when its like that, run. Just run.

They say, back in the day, they used to stake folk out, naked, in the heather for the midgies to feast on. And by morning they would have been driven entirely insane. }}}}

We get mozzies down here in the South East. They are more disciplined than the SAS. I can see them now giving out orders with hand codes. Like the Scottish Midge they dont take prisoners, not alive anyway. They get you when your most vulnerable with such pride I swear I can hear them laugh. Ive been bitten from pointy hat to curly toe boots, Ive been bitten where a witch sits on her broomstick. Ive dibbled and dabbled and come up with a concoction that will help heal the furnace of a boil where, theyve broken the skin, and caused a plague of such magnitude they make the Black Death look trivial. And like the Scottish Midge, the Southern Mozzis can burst through a full, Henry the 8th, suit of armour with ease. God looks away and says " yer on yer own mate" and the Devil just laughs.

Wow, though people compare about bugs here it's rarely like that, and the skeeters are mainly out around dusk. Chiggers are bad but easy to avoid if you have a path to stay on or frequently mowed grass to camp on. They could easily drive one insane but are ground and vegetation bugs.

You need to experience camping nearly bug free. It's a treat. Though I had to salt down a favorite place to pitch my tent to drive off the slugs.

Oh slugs !!! evil leftovers from an alien planet. The worms of Dune arent a patch on these slippery, slimy death keepers. I sleep with a flame thrower under my bed for the 12 months of the year, there is no reprieve, there is no escape.

{{ The Irish variant, but I had a camping trip exactly like this once, only ten times the midges when we foolishly camped somewhere that looked nice- a glade under some trees among the grass next to a river. Bad choice.       }}

halfwise wrote:Wow, though people compare about bugs here it's rarely like that, and the skeeters are mainly out around dusk.  Chiggers are bad but easy to avoid if you have a path to stay on or frequently mowed grass to camp on.  They could easily drive one insane but are ground and vegetation bugs.

You need to experience camping nearly bug free.  It's a treat.  Though I had to salt down a favorite place to pitch my tent to drive off the slugs.

Yep, here in Minnesota if you go camping in the early spring or late fall you avoid the bugs pretty neatly.

So now you've galumphed off to minnesota? Last I recalled you were in Ohio or some other belly button state.

i like that word, Galumphed, "Galumph" is good also, makes me think of wellies