To the uninitiated, my title of boatyard pests might seem to refer to the two-legged variety that makes life hard for folks just interested in getting on with prepping their boat for the water. But no, it refers to insects.
Honestly, I’ve spent most of my life not thinking about Greenhead flies. But working one summer in a boatyard here in Massachusetts put me wise to the facts: they won’t go away on their own. For those not from coastal areas infested with Greenheads, I can personally assure you that No-see-umms, Blackflies, and Mosquitos are benevolent neighbors to have. As you drive along the coastal roads, you might notice the big black wooden boxes on poles in the marshes. Those boxes trap and control the population; greenheads are not too susceptible to chemical controls. They seem to laugh them off and get back to the serious business of bitting you.
The female Greenhead has a mouth designed to take a divot out of your leg and suck the blood with pleasure. The fly will shrug off a hit, swat, and slam. As my co-worker, David informed me: ” you can’t be too nice to them; try to brush them off, and they just get mad.” He then showed me the certified effective manner of disposing of one as it lands on you. You grab it, roll it between your fingers, crush it and drop it, leaving the corpse as an example to its siblings. You may be queasy about the crushing part, but I assure you that these large horse flies are hard to kill, and after you have several nasty and painful divots cut into arms and legs, the desire to be benevolently human to your fellow-creature fades.
I had wondered for a while why a boatyard would stock an entire case of spray-on oven cleaner – name brand at that. David informed me that it was ” the best way of loosening up old crudded on varnish.” Applied liberally, then left for several hours and then rinsed off, it does make old varnish easier to scrape off. But there is a second use for it. It’s an effective means of terminating the odd yellow jacket colony hidden beneath the seat of a boat you need to clean up. Not much hurts, like getting stung a dozen times by yellow jackets out for a junket and feeling mean. Spray that nest down with oven cleaner, run like hell and watch the fun. Reapply as needed.
There’s a lot to be said about getting along with other creatures. But greenheads and yellow jackets are the psychopaths of the insect world. Go figure!
Oh, horseflies are the worst! In Hawaii, we also saw black bees which were the angriest looking insect I’ve ever seen. It’s a good idea to steer clear of them altogether.
I’ve never heard of the horsefly referred to as a Greenhead. They are nasty. My father had a diamond scar on his leg…you could say a badge of honour for surviving one of their nasty bites.
the greenhead is a species of fly that falls into the horse fly category here’s a brief Wikipedia article on them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabanus_nigrovittatus
Thanks, I will take a look at it.
I’ve hear about the flies from the first in laws who were from Milo, Maine. Yellow Jackets I had first hand experience with a couple of summers ago. I ‘was gonna” grind out a tree stump and put it off too long. The yellow jackets made it a happy home and when I tried to pound in a stake into the ground above the terrace they occupied, they attacked. My neighbor, who could see at night kindly came by and sprayed the crap out of them in the dark. End of story. I’m good to some bugs if they are beneficial but flies of any size and yellow jackets and hornets are just not in that category. I keep a bat for the mosquito’s. 🙂
I’ll stick with my view that yellow jackets are the psychopaths of the insect world. But it is true that mosquitoes are right up there with them.
I’m in full agreement with you. Never knew oven cleaner would work on those monsters.