So I have been somewhat of an absentee blog poster lately. Sorry about that. That being said, my blog seems to be doing pretty well as far as number of views per day thanks to the links from my coworkers blogs. Thanks guys. I promise to be more diligent about writing more frequently. Even if the posts are just a random assortment of loosely associated occurrences. Ok enough of the pleasantries, let ME tell YOU a thing or two about bugs.
I have spent considerable time in this village of Atqasuk, but today was unlike any other day that I have seen. In the Midwest a walk in the park, a picnic, or a day fishing often has the annoyance of a dozen or so little mosquitoes following you around. Spray on a light layer of Deet and you are good to go.
This is not the case in Atqasuk. Here a few dozen bugs would be great. It is more likely (on warm days) that you have several hundred to a thousand flying around you at any given moment. Those who have not witnessed it may balk, but those who have witnessed it can attest to the truth of this statement. Have you ever seen the videos of mouse outbreaks in Australia? You know, those images of countless mice clamouring over one another in a massive, moving horde. Thats kind of what it is like here, but with hungry, flying bugs.
Oh yeah and did I mention that bugspray seems to only stop them for 30 minutes or so. The bottle says “Stops bugs for up to 8 hours of protection”. Well I am here to tell you it lies! Or at the very least, when in Atqasuk there is a Bermuda Triangle where the bugs have developed an immunity to it.
Anyway, back to today. Pointframing season has begun. Normally we are on boardwalks so our movements do not stir up a lot of bugs (only about 50 highly intuitive ones), but now we are pointframing a 1km square grid which means we are trudging around out in the tundra. This kicks up bugs as you move along and you acquire more and more until the cloud of tag alongs is so thick you have trouble concentrating on plants. This is not because they are biting you (which they are), not because they make a high-pitched, thunderous whine of thousands of wings (which there do), but because you actually have trouble SEEING through the cloud of them all moving in front of you. Today there was more than a few times in which I wanted to drop my ruler, jump up, and go running across the tundra just to have a momentary reprieve from these blood-sucking miscreants. That would probably cause more problems than it would solve as it would stir up an even larger cloud. There was one point today when the wind picked up and seemed to blow the bugs away. I made sure to point this development out to Jenny (who was sitting about 3 feet away), to which she replied “Yeah but there is no way I could possibly count the number of them crawling on your head and back right now!” Then, as it often does here, just like that the wind changed and died down bringing the cloud back once more.
If you are reading this Kelsey, don’t be scared. Actually you already know because your arms looked pretty mangled after a weekend here, so maybe a little fear of it is healthy (you know, some self-preservation). Desspite all this, I would still take the bugs over the finger debilitating cold of some towns I know of further north. Even though I came in from the field today and counted 14 bites on my face alone…MY FACE!!! Oh things we do for science. So next time I am sitting on the paddleboat on a summer evening with a beer in one hand and a fishing pole in the other when a mosquito bites my arm, and someone with me says “Damn bugs!”. I am going to (ever so slightly) smirk, look over, and say “Let ME tell YOU a thing or two about bugs.”
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