It's That Time of Year

Yes, it's that time of year, no not taxes although it's that time too,  it's deer fly season.  They're at their worse between Mother's Day and Father's Day, but  they frequently start in April and they have come with a bang this year.  We always have numerous biting insects around here, after all we do live in a swamp, but copious amounts of Avon's Skin So Soft insect repellant usually takes care of them.  But not deer fly, nothing stops deer fly, they don't care if you've recently bathed in a vat of DEET, they're going to bite. And the resulting bite swells up and itches like crazy, and even worse they've been known to carry Tularemia (rabbit fever).

When we first moved here we went online to see what we could do about them and read  that they're attracted to the color blue and you could put blue paint on bottles and cover them with an attractant to capture them.   We kind of pooh-poohed this idea and learned to live with them.  But one day walking by a neighbor's yard we saw a bunch of blue bottles stuck up around the yard.  Being the nosey lady I am I went up, rang the doorbell and asked the man who answered if the things really worked, and he assured us they did, told us to carry one home and try it out, so we did.

We were sold!  It trapped all kinds of flies.  He had told us the sticky stuff was called Tangle Foot and that we could get it at Ace Hardware and that's what we did.

So each year we save large bottles, coat them with Tangle Foot and try to remove as many deer fly from the breeding cycle as we can.

I was out for only a short while today and caught about 30 flies.  Soon we'll be catching them by the 100's.