After a month and a half of comfortable days and and pleasant, sleeping weather nights, Iowa’s normal weather pattern arrived with a vengeance last week. The humidity is oppressive, the temperatures hot all day and only slightly cooler after sunset. Forecasters like to say “The weather pattern has become active” which is the euphemism they use because they don’t want to start a panic by saying “Darn tootin’ you better have path to the basement clear or a tornado could land you and your house somewhere over the rainbow.”
With hot, humid weather comes the arrival of my least favorite walking companions, the deer flies. The small, striped flies have a wicked bite. But usually, they get tangled in my hair which is not an easy feat to accomplish considering how little hair I have compared to my bare arms and legs on hot mornings. The flies are exceedingly stupid, unable to extricate themselves from my inch-long hair or make their way to my scalp in a timely fashion. So I spend a considerable amount of each morning walk picking the little critters out of my hair and squashing them. So far, my record is 23 on one walk, something I think our president, my partner in fly extermination, would be proud.
This morning, as I committed insecticide with impunity, a dark spot on the road sprang to life and hopped out of my way. At first I thought it was a beetle, but closer inspection revealed it to be a tiny toad. But every time I got in front of it and tried to take it’s picture, it did an about face and hopped in the opposite direction. Finally, I gave up on capturing it’s smile and put away my camera. Then worried that the next car to drive by would end the toad’s life with a splat, I snuck up behind it, scooped it into my palm and carried it to the side of the road. Before I could bend down, it sprang from my hand, landed on the grass and disappeared. I shrugged, picked a deer fly from my hair and squashed it.
Were the two responses to critters on my road at odds with one another? How could I treat the toad, who could become a deer fly predator, with great compassion and then murder a deer fly? I have no good answer to the question, just a pragmatic suggestion for the deer flies. When they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone. Otherwise, we’ll be at loggerheads until the baby toad gets big enough to eat my enemies or weather changes, whichever comes first.
This could be a long summer.
