Yesterday afternoon when Sena came inside from working in the backyard garden, I noticed she had some swelling around her lips and eyes. Despite applying OFF! Deep Woods she got trapped in a swarm of gnats.
This reminded me of a similar swarm last spring around this time while we were out at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area. I wrote a post partly about that because of how thick they were.
Today I found a recently posted article about gnats, which have a variety of different names: no—see-ums, black flies, midges, punkies, moose flies and so on. One other author recommended seeing a doctor if you got swelling around your eyes and lips. Another author doesn’t mention that. Sena’s swelling was reduced this morning, but still noticeable.
She thinks the dozens of mulch bags she got caused most of the problem. That’s probably true since mulch is wet and can attract fungus gnats. While fungus gnats are said to be the non-biting kind of gnat, that doesn’t make them less of a nuisance.
The other day, Sena also saw the groundhog we filmed last year close to our back property line. It stood right up in about the same spot we saw it last year, when it had baby groundhogs. Sena talked about going out there to continue poking holes at the mound it made digging its burrow.
I told her that groundhogs carry a number of diseases, including rabies, and maybe the best bet would be to leave it alone. Today, I found a YouTube video from 11 years ago of a news report that demonstrated how dangerous groundhogs can be—no matter how cute they looked in our video last year.
I’m OK with nature, as long as it stays outside.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 