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Monstrous Murderous Midges

 

The cause of so many alliterative strings of expletives is brought to heel by an alliterative cosmetic

 

I don’t do much moaning although as my years advance I do find much more to moan about. I have managed to be stoical  adversity, facing the monstrous Highland midge, the miniscule menace. Midges love to munch on me making my life on occasion, a misery.

 

On one instance after a particularly bad attack at the Old Bridge in Grantown on the famous Spey I heard myself mutter;

 

 “I’ve been bitten everywhere midges can bite and all the b-------s can do now is bite the bits they have already bitten, so b----r them!”

 

I looked like I had gone 10 rounds with Mohamed Ali, swollen eyelids and lips, raging red ears, covered in an alpine range of allergic reactions to the blood sucking habits of the lady midge of species Culicoides impunctatus.  

 

I read somewhere that there are about 20 million female midges for every person in Scotland, so some of you out there should be bloody well grateful that I am taking some of your share! Drawn to us by the exhalation of carbon dioxide in our breath, short of being a corpse, you cannot hide from them.

 

Even trout shun midges, millions there may be but they’re too small to be of any use as a snack. Therein lies the problem, there is just one tiny little bat that has a taste for them and if I could meet him I’d shake his hand, for nothing else can be bothered to predate these tiny tormentors.

 

How many minutes and months have these miniscule monsters mangled mankind? I cheered when I heard about the propane powered pest purger. Designed to exhale Co2 it draws our nemesis nigh where they are trapped and slaughtered by the million. I would have signed up to the cause to have midges murdered throughout Scotland by introducing a predatory species of insect that just loves to munch on midge larvae. Damn and blast to hell the tree hugger who claimed that it would endanger that wonderful little bat which lives exclusively on midges if we massacred the midge nation. If I could meet that pesky pipistrelle I’d pop him one for preserving that pestilent predator!

 

Apparently, APPARENTLY – midges are an important part of the food chain: bat eats midge – midge eats man alive. If I could meet the ecologist who came up with that scientific story I’d semi strangle that skinny runt, stuff his research grant where even midges won’t go and stuff him, naked, into a cage wafted by a Co2 breeze, then wait until his attitude changed.

 

Then one wonderful day someone saved my sausage, Skin So Soft my son he whispered. Woodland Fresh.

 

Decades of immersing my head in the river to cool my bites only to expose my arse the to the marauding midges; years of running away only to find I was hastening too a dinner date with more midges; breaking my fishing rod; itching and scratching ‘til I bled, then someone suggested a failsafe elixir.

 

Ding dong, Avon calling, the lady left me my magic potion. A pump action potion of ‘moisturising dry oil body spray’ consisting of isopropyl, palmitate, denat, aqua parfum and alcohol. Alcohol! The amount of that stuff I‘ve consumed without putting one midge off, well it was clear that alcohol was not the active agent. Whatever, who cares, it works and the alcohol was pretty cool.

 

Now the knowledge is widely spread and congregations of gnarled anglers who once reeked of long dead fish, dogs, alcohol and tobacco smells like the perfumery department of Boots.

 

I gloat as I watch clouds of emaciated midges fizzing around my head, tongues flailing furiously, gnashers gnashing desperately wanting my body fluids to feed their next generation. I relish the thought that for every midge that goes hungry millions more will not be born and if the food chain fails and that lowly bat goes to the great cave in the sky because of the demise of the dreadful midge, I will mourn it’s passing. I will, however, celebrate with copious cocktails the collapse of the food chain; Bat - Midge - Man. I will sing a song of salutation to Skin So Soft lubricated with soft Spey spirit.

 

Sląinte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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