If not for A/C , the South wouldn’t be growing nearly as fast.
Anyone who’s looked at the historical data knows that…
However, many are only interested in the present and perhaps the near future. Pun intended, but the past is just an afterthought.
The bugs haven’t been bad so far here, but the muggy and hot are showing out.
The present hot, mugginess and bugginess are enough to keep me in place in New England, regardless of AC. I prefer not needing AC at all.
We are already in our second heat wave this summer. I am about ready for winter!
-sing
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A bit strange for me, here in Jacksonville (besides the manatee that tried to knock me over this morning) is the mossies.
I paddle very early every morning, and, up until this year, very rarely was bothered by mosquitoes.
This year, since the warm set in (about a month now), just about every morning I end up with 1 or 2 bites, primarily on the legs, and it happens on the return carry (after paddle) through wet (due) grass.
Well the bugs sure got me this year! Black flies, mosquitoes and deer flies!..no paddling ,no biking, no nothing! Haha!! A walking ghost peppered in calamine lotion!
A friend is coming this week to help with forest maintenance…its either us cutting some trees or tge forest will swallow me up!Might slow the swamp bugs down a bit…i hope! The woods r quite thick about 200 feet back!
If it weren’t for grandkids being here, A/C wouldn’t keep me here. I’d move in a minute back up north. I just finished a 20 mile bike ride, and my clothes were literally dripping. That said, I have never had to resort to a headnet for bugs here unlike the upper Midwest.
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An Ounce of Sweat Is Worth…?
“It ain’t heat! It’s hue-mid-it-teee!”
The sawgrass rustled back just wind’s sigh.
“Why if there weren’t no damn A.C. that would be the end of me!”
The ole sun looking down n’er blinked an eye.
“Why the corn afield is poppin’! Seems like my sweat is never stoppin’!”
Suddenly dark sodden skies let all down.
Dry river bed now rollin’. Sirens and bells soon tollin’.
Humidity once grounded still has way to drown.
“Dag these darn snowbirds, theyz everywhere I hear’s the word!”
“But the tourist count seems bit down on the beach.”
“Florida’s great again!” “We’ve been liberated from them.”
In rising water the skulking gator extends its reach.
“Squeeters and 'em gnats, theyz is ravenous! They’re ersatz!”
“Why, I’d wish they’d go give that Yankee blood a try!”
“Ahhhhh, ain’t no room up here!” The heated blackflies buzz back in sneer,
“We’ve been invaded by countless spotted lantern fly!”
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Redbugs(chiggers), skeeters , deer flies, no-see ums, horse flies, ticks, biting flies that look like house flies. I’ve been tasted by them all but I’m glad we don’t have swarming black flies.
And don’t forget, after twenty minutes-or-so of cursin’ and swattin’ and whatnot, your head and neck and wrists stinging, itching, bumping up beneath crushed wings and legs and thoraxes (thoraxi?), suddenly some low-thrum droaner comes whizzin’ by your ear to plant itself mid-back neck with a thud, and in but a millisecond of mind silently screamin’ out, “NO! NOT THIS TIME YA DAMN HORSEFLY!”, arm and hand sweep in a blaze TTTTTTHHHHWWWAAACCCKKK!!! Ya GOT IT!
And, in about two-to-three seconds, “IT” has per rude olfactory introduction reclassified your entomological mis-identification.
“Damn! Marmorated Stink Bug.”
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The closest I’ve come is a praying mantis flying into my shirt collar when was a kid. That freaked me out.
Sounds like you have been the main course on the insect buffet. I am the proud owner of headnets and bug jackets. DEET they don’t eat, and Permethrin ticks them OFF!
With ya there, Sir String! Same experience. Well, sort of. It was really Lynn Dovey at the High School Junior Ring Dance:
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But now-and-then ya meet the bunch,
that at these lotions love t’scoff,
“Lay it on there thick, our dear Skippy Boy,
for our short lives bathe in secticide.
It’s like some bitter splash of Wishbone marinade,
an Italian Good last Seasons of our suicide.”
“But don’t think for one minute these are Salad Days,
for either you or us with present dining plans.
For as long as we’re able we’ll be dining this here table.
You’re entree of honor for our Last Supper, fleshy man.”
I’ve got to stop having these six-legged Kafkaesque associates infiltrating my prose, and Insect Shield field wear!
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Don’t forget the many insect borne diseases that could infiltrate more than one’s prose. Some deadly and one even worse causing an allergy to meat forcing us to eat healthier! 
Yes, isn’t it enthralling to know that from just one pin-head sized black-legged (deer) tick vector you might receive simultaneous injections of parasitic Babesia (Babesiosis), to poison one’s blood, and Borrelia bacteria (Lyme’s), to whack-out just about all other operating systems. A regular B&B of The Not So Good Night Sleep. Yup, per Lyme’s, my friend Ed up in the Daks (a timber industry man often in the deer, deer woods) has Alpha Gal Syndrome (or is that Gal Gadot Syndrome, whereupon a scintillating Amazon in patriotic skivvies golden lasoos ya in yer fever-pitched sleep? Must be some secretive Mossad combatant training?). Curiously, the only “red” meat he seems to have awful hive and mild anaphylactic reaction to is beef, and he can still enjoy the porcine along with chicken, as well as, and this surprised me, venison, which he annually hunts and butchers for most of his spring-to-next-winter meat consumption. I guess another example how Lyme’s will keep researchers busy (if funding’s available) for decades, try’n to fathom its heinous but variable modes and means in affecting the human body.
Keeps up with all these exotic insect bourne maladies increasing, along with the warming climate, and perhaps a few years of exotic reptilian pet releases to allow multiplication, perhaps some mambas and fer-de-lances, and we’ll soon be able to rival our outdoor American experience right up there with Stanley’s darkest night in Africa. Welll, maybe we’ll need a few hundred Eastern Catamounts to show up, too, so as not to allow African Lions gain all the feline-eats-man headlines. It’s enough to almost have me throw myself on the bald face hornets nest. Who knows? 100 of those stinging injections of jump ‘n jive juice, maybe I’ll be cured. Of somethin’, anyway.
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AHA! I omitted the hornets , yellow jackets and
red wasps because they got no sustenance from puncturing my hide.
What they did get was genocide.
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Apostrophes To An Apocalypse
Some say world will end in fire.
Some say t’will be ice.
String says, “While it burns up here
this a.c. sure is nice.”
Helstrom has his Chronicles,
thinks we’ll bug out pestered fools.
And moldy Last of Us with icy stare
moan about this hot mess drool.
And that’s all the buzz from the hive today! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s broken seal broadcast.
Inspired by ducks and canoes.
The Bee Apocalypse is coming.
Some just say to Let It Be.
And the Beatles replied I Will.
Fruits and Vegies fear the worst.
Let’s us Pray said the Mantis.
No way to Pollenate is a bitter pill.
Is it again the Insecticides.
Or Mites with Viruses that bite.
Another Silent Spring sounds still.
The Web of Life in periled plight.
Said the Fly to the Spider.