First “sighâ€ of spring, in Hunting Stories

Along time ago, but after flight was first invented, I joined part of the US military that was very involved with flying. The first thing they did was put me on a plane and flies me to Texas. I got off the plane and was shown lots of things, but one thing I was wholly unprepared for.

Every night after I would lie down and stop getting yelled at, I would try to sleep. It was very difficult. The windows were open in the bays at night because even though air conditioning was invented, it was too expensive to waste cool air, on freshly warmed up troops.

From yonder open window every Cicada bug in Texas was making shrill sounds trying to draw in a mate. The more boy bugs on a branch the louder things got. They stayed at it all night or until it was time to get up. Then about dawn, the bugs got quieter and the drill sergeants got louder. I was always very tired, but I couldn't sleep day or night. Too bad they haven't invented nine hundred numbers for bugs. It's a call I have not made, and I sure wouldn't miss.

Well All good things must come to and end, and after basic training ended I was pretty much trained up. I learned lots of things, and one thing I leaned, I hate bugs.

Roaches, gnats, red ants, mosquitoes, horse flies, deer flies, chiggers, wasps and wood ticks are at the top of my “what I detest listâ€. Spiders and house flies aren't as bad, but they don't do much for me either.

I didn't run around all last summer squashing miscellaneous ground crawlers. If something is flying by, more often then not, I just get out of its flight path. But bugs that bug me were aptly named bugs, or pests, because that is what they are, and what they do.

Almost ripe summer tomato, oh just look at all those apples, does you arm suddenly itch. What just millipede’d across my bathroom floor? Every sit your gluteus minimus in the lawn chair and get a bee sting lift off?

What is there earthy purpose, other than test your picnic patience? I know I bought bug free baking flour. How can I have something like a tick crawl all over me, a thin skinned Irishmen if there every was one, and I don't notice it until after it stealthy welted my skin?

This past week I had a house fly indoor fly all over invasion. It's my house. They don't pay the taxes, I do. I snapped. Then I went fly swatter crazy. Then “itâ€ hit me. Spring has sprung, and so did I.