There may be a new summer menace but it won’t beat the midgie - Susan Morriaon
Disturbing news reaches us from our friends at Glasgow University of a new summer menace. No longer are mosquitoes the bug of foreign holidays, requiring nets, lotions and those funny whirly things you burn. They are here. Everywhere. And they are just buzzing about it.
The experts said little about the impact of these new flying pest on our native midge population. This is worrying.
We have been here before. An upstart Yankie incomer nearly drove our red squirrels into oblivion until a spirited fightback saw the native population rise. In the words of one official report, Scotland was described as the red squirrels ‘stronghold’, as if Squirrel McNutkin now paced the battlements, armoured up ‘Game of Thrones’ style, snarling ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ at the advancing army of grey nut-nickers.
The midge could face the same threat from the mozzie and I for one am not cool with this.
Don't get me wrong. I have no great love for the midgie. It is a pest, but it is our pest, and therefore we should cherish it.
Other nations may have snakes, killer sharks and bears that do unmentionable things in the woods, but we have the ultimate blood sucking terror, the midgie.
It’s not so much an insect as a weather system, an all-encompassing cloud of mini-vampires, capable of penetrating the toughest of outdoor gear with ease.
Bites can appear on any part of the human body, including that bit in the very middle of your back that you can never reach under any circumstances and really starts to itch at about 2.30 in the morning.
The high-pitched whine exactly matches the maddening frequency of two five-year-olds in the car constantly asking if ‘we’re there yet’. There’s not a Scot in the world who hasn’t taken a sharp breath, sooked a midgie up the nose and subsequently felt it slip down the throat.
It is small, it is annoying, it is unbeatable. Oh, I know there’s chat of a body lotion that keeps them at bay, but when I was young the only thing that saved us from the midgies was my dad smoking his pipe. It was a tough call. Bite now, itch later or choke under a cloud of rancid tobacco smoke.
We should be proud of our home-grown predator. Hollywood bestowed immortal film glory on sharks, bears and crocodiles in Jaws, Grizzly and Rogue, but even they have shied away from the horror that is The Midgie.
The mosquitoes have reached all our coasts, even in the far north where, in the words of a scientist “a member of the public in Shetland reported a mosquito which we were able to confirm”.
No doubt they did, although you do have to wonder just how they did the confirming. Perhaps Shetland is awash with mozzie-spotters, like WW2 ARP wardens, ready to spring into action at the first hint of an incoming swarm.
The lovely people at the Mosquito Scotland research project are still looking for help from us, so if you spot a mozzie, log on and let them know.
But I’m telling you here and now, the only example they’ll get from me will be bug bits splattered across the Sport Section of the Edinburgh Evening News.
I stand by the midgie. Buzz off, mozzie.