[at-l] Gnats! (a contrarian's view)

[blisterfree@surfree.com (Brett Tucker)]

I love gnats. Compared to the vast majority of their predatory or otherwise
insufferable kin - mosquito, noseeum, biting ant, emergent cicada, black
fly, deer fly, deer tick, deer mouse, Shenandoah deer, pilfering bear,
ornery boar, rattlesnake, copperhead, water moccasin, Appalachian cougar,
poisonous shrew, rabid fox, wiley coyote, reintroduced wolf, sweat-sucking
goat, bull moose (cornered, in rut), pit bull terrier (off-leash, in situ),
gun-toting AT-ambulating homo sapien, Canada Jay, and Connecticut chipmunk -
by comparison gnats are benign. Entirely banal. Why, in a wilderness warzone
pitting us against a singleminded, murderous "them," gnats are practically
on our side. Whenever one of the little buggers - or it could be ten of
them, maybe a hundred - descends from its angelic perch to whisper candidly
in my ear, I listen, and listen well. In exchange for a little sweat, a
grain of salt, maybe a midden of earwax, he tells me all about the real
enemy, warns me of their evil schemes. And he tells me to bring others - the
hiking, sweating multitudes - so he can warn them as well. Then the gnat
flies off, purely of his own accord, into the ether. I slap myself...
Should've known the chipmunks were up to no good.

- blisterfree