As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I wonder about experiences which are new as I had one this morning which I am not in favor of.
For those who do not know what a plague of insects are, they never have had box elder bugs. A box elder bug is the vermin which cohabits with the female box elder tree. Col. Richard Irving Dodge simply loved these trees when he was in the Black Hills of South Dakota. How they got to the brier patch I have no idea, but I have always found these weeds to be one of the worst trees on planet earth.
There is not a one of these maple family vermin trees which produces a tree. What they do is grow up, break off and then have shoots come out that make clumps of bushy trees which produce these damned bugs.
The only worse tree in the world is the Siberian Elm. That damned thing is short on leaf and long on rot. We used to have one when I ploughed the fields that a hawk sat in. It was dead of course as those damned things always were dead, but how they got to the brier patch I have no clue either. You should get the idea at this time that we have no trees here, just these weeds.
Pretty white river birch.........they snap like kindling in our ice storms. We did have elms, but the bugs got them. Cottonwoods crack like sticks in our storms. Good trees give up the ghost and die from drought or cold. I had hopes of being rid of these box elders as it got cold here one year, and it wiped out most of them in our windbreak, which really did not help with the wind, but the damned things came back as they are weeds.
So I was awakened in rolling over this winter morning by feeling like I had a bug in my ear. I wondered how that could have happened and as I probed the top of my ear, sure as hell there was a box elder bug in that crevice. I suppose it was warm, but as I said, you would have to be around these vermin to get an idea of what they are as in bad years they are always crawling on you inside the house. Yes they crawl in the house siding to over winter and then come out all winter, so you are flicking the damned things off of you, as they fall in your hair, your drinks and crawl into bed with you. The floors get decorated with having to step on them as they annoy the hell out of you.
This one though found a new way to annoy me, in crawling into my ear. satan and those two legged demoniacs certainly find new ways to bother me, but in that I now understand the phrase of "Who put a bug in your ear" or "What is wrong with you, you got a bug up your butt?".
Obviously the bugs of these legends is the box elder bug as no insect is as stupidly liberal as a box elder bug. They live on a poor excuse for a maple. They bite humans thinking humans are maple trees. They crawl into ears and this year in the Richard and Stephanie stove, we have had so many enjoying themselves that it smells sometimes like burnt hair when it fires up. All that protein going to waste, but I cleaned out a number of them sort of fossilized on the stove floor as they are too stupid to know they can not survive 500 degrees.
I have fantasies of cutting down all the female elder trees here. Then I realize in summer I have better things to do. Then I realize I do not have the money to do it as I still await the humanity of the rich people to donate, and then I see the squirrels who would starve if not for those pathetic seeds stuck to those branches all winter to feed them, and I think well maybe those bugs are not so bad..........and then I get one in my ear, and I have been flicking them for weeks as I try to type and it gets beyond annoying.
One year is a severe drought we had a plague and I almost went nuts with them. My puppy at the time in Dandy used to eat them to kill them, but there were too many and she gave up. My socks though were red from them. They crawled into bed by the hordes of them and I could not drink pop as I would find elder bugs floating on the surface. Why they have an affinity for dropping off a ceiling into a glass is beyond me
Teddy Roosevelt used to call them Box Alder trees. I would have hoped he would have exterminated them, along with the wolves, mountain lions and large bears, coyotes, eagles, bird hawks, horned owls and I am sure the list could be added too, but this is about time to wrap this up in how my day started. It was not finished at 9 am though as I was getting out broth from the freezer for chicken soup and I discovered the plastic bag had settled through the grate and was holding it like a fist. I mean that never happened in all my life and here I have this disaster.
So I unload that part and pull in frustration in thinking I have to chop it out, and just like that God sent an Holy Angel who popped it out. God is very kind to orphan girls apparently who awake to having their ears invaded by box elder bugs. No doubt from someone who thought those trees were pretty out west and brought them to where nothing grows and sure as hell.......they grow. Just like all the other shit here that grows which no one wants.
Nuff Said
agtG
agtG
