Swatting

I’ve been swatting at these things all day with SWAT! various degrees of success. They aren’t swarming by any means, just coming around often enough that I have to be vigilant.

At least we don’t have blackflies on our property. I’m not allergic to much but those things make me actually sick. They bite me in the back of my neck just along my hairline. They swell up and itch SWAT! and I get a low-grade fever. We also do not have ticks on our property, at SWAT! least I have never seen one. They abound up on the nature trail.

We were driving back from Naomikong yesterday SWAT! and we were passing Tower Road and the GG was mentioning SWAT! how we haven’t driven it for a while. That stirred up some childhood memories for me of riding with my parents on Tower Road so we went back over there today and drove it from Dollar Settlement where it starts back to the Spectacle Lake SWAT! overlook and the “Grandma Left Her Purse in the Graveyard” cemetery. As we were driving along, another memory surfaced. The old faaaar tower. We used to drive in to look at the old tower. Tower Road? Get it?

The tower is long gone and today SWAT! I couldn’t have remembered where the turnoff was to save my life. And I couldn’t do the google because NO SERVICE. When we got back to the moomincabin I did do the google and found not only the location but the gruesome story we were always told as kids. The synopsis SWAT! is that the ranger’s 3-year-old daughter was playing on the cabin porch when a bear came along, carried her off and killed her. If you are strong enough to read the whole story, here’s a link. This happened well before I was born but it was still fresh in the minds of the eastern yooperlanders when I was a child.

Hot sticky day but a late afternoon shower has me feeling refreshed. Still haven’t gotten in the lake. SWAT! SWAT! SWAT!

One Response to “Swatting”

  1. Margaret Says:

    Is there anything you can put on yourself to avoid these pesky critters? I don’t know if I have the guts to read the story; I’m already so terrified of bears.