Finally, a beautiful morning to take my coffee out onto the patio. No humidity, thus dry cushions and a soft breeze. Pure bliss.
I filled the bird feeders, watered my potted flowers, and watched as orioles, finches, cardinals and blue jays feasted, while my resident wren serenaded from atop his house. Life’s simple pleasures for sure. And then, I was discovered! Those pesty little gnats. My serenity was short-lived.
Something so small that you could mistake them for eye floaters, yet more relentless than telemarketers. They swarm your head like paparazzi mistaking you for a celebrity. I had a whole two minutes of peace before the invasion began.
It’s hard to enjoy the outdoors when the weather is practically begging you to come out and play. I want to attend to my flowers, mow the lawn, or simply exist in peace, but suddenly, I’m in the middle of a “gnat ambush”.
Last evening, my husband and I went to play pickleball – our way of getting some exercise, enjoying the outdoors and spending time with friends. It should have been a perfect evening filled with friendly competition and laughter. Instead, it turned into a battle for survival and a competition to find out what spray or home-made concoction defeats them. No winners to date.
Gnats sneak behind your glasses, forcing you to stop mid-swing to fish them out of your eyes. They burrow into your ears. You inhale them, both through your nose and your mouth, adding some unexpected protein to your diet (though not enough to be useful). But worst of all, they invade your scalp, giving you flashbacks to that unfortunate head lice incident you’d rather not relive.
Pickleball was now less of a game and more of an endurance test. Who can last the longest before fleeing indoors in defeat?
When did gnats, or bugs in general, become so aggressive? Back in my childhood, summer was spent outdoors, running wild with friends. Sure, there were bugs, but they didn’t chase you like you owed them money. Has something shifted in our ecosystem? Never did we have to retreat indoors because we couldn’t handle the flying pests. This is what our tax dollars should be spent wisely on, not wasting it on studying the sexual habits of quails on cocaine.
And just when we think we’ve survived the reign of the gnats, another lineup of tiny tormentors will take their place:
MOSQUITOES – the infamous bloodsuckers we’ve come to know, hate and stick around for most of the summer.
NO-SEE-UMS (not sure of their scientific name and don’t care) – the tiny little demons you can hardly see that leave a burning sensation like you were bitten by the granddaddy of all mosquitoes. Fact is, it’s their urine that causes the burning sensation. Sleep tight with that knowledge in your brain. Your life is now complete.
ASIAN BEETLES & BOXELDER BUGS – at least these don’t want to be on our bodies. No, they prefer to wreak havoc by leaving a million, could be a gazillion, little black spots all over our house siding, and they squeeze into any hole they can find and hang out on our ceilings. Then when you go to suck them into your vacuum, you come up with a whole new kind of room deodorizer.
So how do we reclaim our summer from these airborne nuisances?
I present to you my multi-million-dollar invention: A high-tech gnat force-field headgear contraption. Still working on a sophisticated name for it. I’m not talking about the flimsy beekeeper netting we all know doesn’t work. No, this contraption would be supported by a lightweight framework, keeping it away from your face on all sides, enabling you to see a pickleball from all angles. It would only require that the person have shoulders, and I’m pretty confident they all do. They would come complete with a tiny roof-like projection (I’m still working on a retractable type), that would serve as a sun visor, with a solar powered mini fan, to ward off the tiny bastards before they make bodily contact.
I’d love to share more, but I’ve got to leave something for Shark Tank. It’s truly a 50/50 shot whether Mr. Wonderful would fund this on the spot, or take it out back, squash it flat with his designer loafer, and declare it less useful than the gnats it was designed to defeat. Either way, I’m betting it makes a better crunch.
Would you look ridiculous? Absolutely! But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Unlike mosquitoes, which require blood for their reproductive process (so glad we can assist with that and so glad their assistance is not needed with ours), gnats serve no purpose that I know of. Their sole mission seems to be ensuring we never enjoy a peaceful moment outdoors.
Maybe they’re thrill-seekers, addicted to the adrenaline rush of dodging frantic hand swats. Maybe they just want to inspect every inch of our faces like tiny-winged detectives, or maybe they live by their motto: WE DON’T BITE. WE DON’T STING. WE JUST RUIN YOUR LIFE FOR FUN. Okay, I made that up, but if they did have a motto, that would be it.
So raise your glass, preferably with a lid, because gnats love nothing more than taking a nose dive into your drink, and let’s toast: “ To the hope that one day, gnats – although highly unlikely, will develop a fear of humans, or that my brilliant, state-of-the-art, high-tech gnat force-field headgear will be patented, making me rich enough to retire somewhere where gnats don’t exist. I’m not holding out much hope for either…but I’m confident Mr. Wonderful would be the first to join us in a toast, because if there’s one thing he loves more than a good royalty deal, it’s a bug-free sip of chardonnay. CHEERS.”
