Keeping the tally on an ever-growing summer collection

My friend Eddie and I had been working on collecting deer flies for almost two weeks.

Our goal was to fill a three-foot tall glass jug to the top with the victims of our forays into the woods.

We would tally our totals at the end of each day, carefully counting each fly as we dropped them through the one-inch mouth of the jug.

Eddie was pretty skilled at deer fly swatting, but I was not too far behind him.

For two eight-year-old boys, deer fly collecting was a great way to pass the time as we explored the woods around our Limekiln Lake homes.

One particular day we decided to take a hike out to a pond on the back side of the campground.

We knew the area would be abundant with the pests.

I had found a small brown whisky bottle in the woods on a previous adventure and brought it along.

It was flat-sided and fit perfectly in the back pocket of my blue jeans. I would use it to hold my day’s catch.

Eddie relied on a worm container that he strapped to the canvas belt that was holding up his pants.

We tramped out across his back yard which met up with the campsite road.

It wasn’t long before I killed a couple of those little vampires and added them to my collection.

Eddie out-paced me a bit and said there were better bugs around a large boggy area at the bottom of a creek wash.

I went to catch up to him and found him in a familiar pose with one hand in the air waiting for deer flies to land.

The forest was warm and musky and smelled of ripened ferns and spruce. The ground under our feet was spongy and it seemed like a good hunting ground.

I took off my wool baseball cap and used it as a swatter. In no time I had taken down twelve of the little devils. Eddie said he was up to thirty or so.

Most of the deer flies were trying to land on the back of my shoulder.

They were difficult to see and I didn’t realize they were even there until they had a good piece of my meat in their jaws.

We swatted at this spot until the bugs petered out.

We continued on till we came to the old beaver pond.

The mid-day sun was beating down and the shade of the spruce trees along the pond was welcoming.

The cicadas were howling and the abundance of deer flies was amazing.

It wasn’t long before I caught up to Eddie’s body count of seventy flies. The bottle was filling up pretty well.

Eddie was still trying to catch them one at a time with his hands-up technique. I killed two or three at a time with each swat of my hat.

When the back of my neck and ears started to swell from the numerous bites, Eddie and I decided to call it quits.

We deposited our day’s take into the old glass jar. It was gradually getting filled, and we had many summer days ahead of us.

 

Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,

lives at Big Moose Lake.ltmitch3rdny@aol.com