WE share our lives with beasties. In so saying, I’m not referring to a general relationship with other creatures on the planet. No, I’m referring to a far more intimate relationship – with beasties that help themselves to our lives.
Foremost among my thoughts is the midge. They wouldn’t be so bad if you could at least see them but they work away invisibly on your arms and face, anaesthetising you so that you think you’ve got away with it until you get home and, a day later, massive red welts appear on your skin.
But it isn’t just them that ruin summer in the Highlands and Islands. Recently, I took a walk in woods by a National Trust property in Aberdeenshire. It was blissful but I was accompanied most of the way by a large fly buzzing aboot ma coupon.
True, at least I could see it – in glimpses – and so I knew what I was dealing with it, but I was just as helpless as with the midges. There was nothing I could do to get rid of this thing.
There’s a smaller version in the hoose at the moment and, I will be quite frank with you here, readers, he takes the mickey out of me. He lands on my plate of honeyed oatcakes, then dodges away when I flap at him, and comes back to poke more fun at me.
They can tell, too, when you’ve gone to fetch a rolled-up magazine or a duster with which to flick at them with fatal intent. They sit there, pretending they don’t know what’s going on, then as soon as you raise your weapon of choice they skedaddle.
No getting round it: they ruin summer. Recently, awareness has spread of a worse threat in the lovely outdoors: ticks that can give you debilitating Lyme disease. As a chap who likes to spend time tootling aboot the woods, I’ve become increasingly wary, almost paranoid, about this.
The tick is actually a kind of spider that jumps (it cannot fly) from stalks of long grass or bushes onto your skin. Only a fraction of the ticks carry the disease, which can be successfully treated with antibiotics if caught in the first couple of weeks.
But it’s not something you want to risk getting. It’s typical of wicked old Mother Nature. You envisage yourself floating in soft-focus across a meadow of long grass and, all the time, beasties are trying to suck your blood and cripple you.
Recently, I invested in an expensive pair of knee-length wellies in which to stravaig safely amidst bosky places. Not very romantic to behold, but what can you do? I also keep my sleeves down now and even thought of investing in one of those complete suits of netting that you see advertised, and which appeal to gardeners in midge-infested lands.
For the time being, I have restricted myself to a face-mask and, while this can earn you funny looks at the supermarket checkout, I’m afraid that fashion, and the risk of spreading fear and alarm among the lieges, cannot be legitimate considerations in the war against the wee bitey things.
It’s a terrible indictment of humankind’s supposed braininess: we can put a man on the Moon, but we can’t conquer mighty mites measuring mere millimetres.
