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

[hikester@mindspring.com (Lynn Setzer)]

Well gee whiz.  I never thought of it that way.  ;-)  (especially the part
about the pilfering bear and ornery boar!)

Maybe I can learn to love that high-pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeee in my ear and
that funny tickling sensation when I breathe too deeply and see that somehow
the swarm looks smaller.

Lynn




----- Original Message -----
From: "Brett Tucker" <blisterfree@surfree.com>
To: <at-l@backcountry.net>
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: [at-l] Gnats! (a contrarian's view)


> 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
>
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