Gnats!
It's been unusually hot here for the last few days. This is a relative thing, I realize; ninety-odd-degree weather (with extra humid!) isn't anything out of the ordinary in Pittsburgh, and when I lived there we had a lot of industrial-strength fans and such. Here, I am ill-equipped. My windows don't even have screens, because in normal circumstances there aren't too many bugs, and you can almost always close the windows at night if you want, without turning your room into an oven.
Since last week, though, I've had every window open as wide as it would go, all day and all night. Especially all night, since that's when the air goes down to a modest eighty-five or so. The lack of fans has been kind of a drag, but not nearly as much as the sudden presence of many dozens (hundreds?) of tiny green gnats.
They may in fact not be gnats. I'm not all that well-informed about varieties of small flying insects. But they've mostly left my bowl of cherries and peaches alone, so I don't think they're fruit flies. Whatever they are, they're small enough to sit on a pinhead, brilliant yellow-green, and enamored of my light bulbs. (A light bulb.) They gather in great clouds, circling endlessly.
The last light I turn out is the one right next to my bed. Usually I leave it on for a little while so I can read, but last night there were so many gnats hanging around that the strobe effect made reading difficult. So I turned out the light, and tried to go to sleep. But all the gnats were bereft at the loss of the light, and had nowhere to go. They tried all sorts of things. They landed on my hands. They landed on my wrists and arms and elbows. I pulled my limbs under the sheet, trying to escape them, so instead they landed on my face, my ears, my hair. Dissatisfied with these choices, they took off again, brushing maddeningly feather-light against my heat-sensitized skin, only to land again somewhere else a minute later.
"Gnats!" I wanted to shout. "Can't you settle down somewhere for the night, so we can all get some sleep? Somewhere, preferably, not on my person?" Gnats, however, are uncooperative, and don't respond well to suggestion.
Eventually I must have gotten to sleep, probably once it started to get light enough that the gnats made a mad dash for the window. Tonight it has cooled off, so maybe I can close the window and sweep up the sad dry carcasses of the gnats who found nowhere to go but back to the light bulb. Tonight maybe I will get to sleep alone.
Ah well. At least it isn't mosquitoes.
Since last week, though, I've had every window open as wide as it would go, all day and all night. Especially all night, since that's when the air goes down to a modest eighty-five or so. The lack of fans has been kind of a drag, but not nearly as much as the sudden presence of many dozens (hundreds?) of tiny green gnats.
They may in fact not be gnats. I'm not all that well-informed about varieties of small flying insects. But they've mostly left my bowl of cherries and peaches alone, so I don't think they're fruit flies. Whatever they are, they're small enough to sit on a pinhead, brilliant yellow-green, and enamored of my light bulbs. (A light bulb.) They gather in great clouds, circling endlessly.
The last light I turn out is the one right next to my bed. Usually I leave it on for a little while so I can read, but last night there were so many gnats hanging around that the strobe effect made reading difficult. So I turned out the light, and tried to go to sleep. But all the gnats were bereft at the loss of the light, and had nowhere to go. They tried all sorts of things. They landed on my hands. They landed on my wrists and arms and elbows. I pulled my limbs under the sheet, trying to escape them, so instead they landed on my face, my ears, my hair. Dissatisfied with these choices, they took off again, brushing maddeningly feather-light against my heat-sensitized skin, only to land again somewhere else a minute later.
"Gnats!" I wanted to shout. "Can't you settle down somewhere for the night, so we can all get some sleep? Somewhere, preferably, not on my person?" Gnats, however, are uncooperative, and don't respond well to suggestion.
Eventually I must have gotten to sleep, probably once it started to get light enough that the gnats made a mad dash for the window. Tonight it has cooled off, so maybe I can close the window and sweep up the sad dry carcasses of the gnats who found nowhere to go but back to the light bulb. Tonight maybe I will get to sleep alone.
Ah well. At least it isn't mosquitoes.