REAL TROUBLE
It was now midsummer and Bruce and Ray learned something which even to
this day few eastern people seem really to know. They became more
acquainted every day with two terrible pests of the North Country, two
pests which make some parts of North America practically uninhabitable
during the time these pests are at their worst. During this time even
the Indians, who are not thin-skinned when it comes to enduring
mosquitoes and black flies, keep out of the worst infested regions.
Mosquitoes breed in shallow stagnant water, where small fish and
minnows cannot destroy their larvæ, the wrigglers; while black flies
breed in rapidly running water. As the three friends travelled
northward, Ganawa was careful to select camp-sites that were not near
shallow warm bays but were exposed to such breezes as might be blowing.
Mosquitoes are weak fliers, and do not venture out in a good breeze,
nor do they like hot sunlight, but on warm muggy days and during fairly
warm nights, they are a fearful pest to both man and beast and to some
extent even to young birds in the nest. At several camping-places,
although Ganawa had chosen the best sites within reach, the mosquitoes
were so bad that immediately after sunset the travellers had to
withdraw into their tepee, in which they kept a smudge going, so the
mosquitoes would not come in through the opening at the top. On warm
nights there were, however, always some mosquitoes in the tepee. Ganawa
protected himself against these by sleeping, Indian fashion, with his
head under the blanket, but the white boys spent several bad nights
before they could get used to this way of sleeping.
When the lads asked Ganawa where mosquitoes and black flies were during
winter, their guide looked puzzled and admitted that he did not know.
“The Indians do not know,” he said, “where the little biters go when
the frost comes. It may be that a bad spirit makes them every summer.”
If the mosquitoes caused the boys to spend several miserable nights,
the black flies annoyed them much during the day. Whenever they had to
make a portage, or when they explored a brush-covered region, these
little pests attacked their faces and hands. Many people do not at once
feel the bite of a black fly, but the insect leaves a puncture from
which the blood will run, and on several days Ray and Bruce looked as
if they had been in a big fight.
During the next few days, the travellers saw many moose, but they were
all so poor that the lads claimed to be able to count their ribs.
Nearly all the moose they saw were in the water and Ganawa explained to
them that they feed on plants in the bottom of the lakes only on warm
days when the flies are bad. “On cool days,” he told the lads, “they
eat brush, and they eat brush during the winter.” On one short
exploring trip Ray suddenly let out a yell as if he had stepped on a
rattlesnake. Then he rushed away brushing his ears and face with his
hands. “Don’t go there!” he called to his friends; “a moose has been
lying down there and he has left a million black flies.”
These were hard days and weeks for Ray and Bruce; they both lost much
weight and grew almost as thin as the moose they saw in the lakes.
The months of June and July are what woodsmen call the “fly season” in
the country of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. But this is
also the time when the birds sing and the early flowers are in bloom
and when the fish bite most actively. By the first of August, the
beautiful fire-weeds are still in bloom, but the birds are silent and
the fish are more sluggish. By this time the lake trout, for instance,
have retired into deep water, where it is difficult to catch them.
However, with modern protection against flies and mosquitoes no boy or
man need fear to go into the North Woods in June and July. And the one
condition on which he must not fail is complete and absolute protection
from mosquitoes at night. Flies and mosquitoes may worry a man in the
daytime, he may get much heated on a long march, or he may fall into
cold water, but if he can have a good sleep at night, a man in good
health can laugh at all hardships.
And here is the way to do it, the recipe, so to speak, for happy
camping. If you are going to live in a cabin, take with you a small
screen tent, bobbinet is best, to put over your bed or bunk. If you are
going to live in a tent, that tent must be absolutely mosquito-proof,
which means that it must have a sod cloth all around the bottom and
that the opening must be protected by a double piece of
mosquito-netting or by a piece of good bobbinet. The mosquito-netting
or the bobbinet is sewed to one flap and is pinned to the other flap
with safety-pins. If a hole is left one inch square, the tent will fill
up with mosquitoes and make sleep impossible.
Some mosquitoes will always find their way into the tent. Every one of
these must be killed before the campers try to sleep. They should be
burnt with a candle as they are found sitting in the tent. With
reasonable care, canvas and bobbinet will not catch fire in this
process, but a lighted candle must not be brought in contact with the
ordinary mosquito-netting or with cheese-cloth. A person who fights
mosquitoes at night does not know the A B C of camping.
There are other pests in the woods in early summer: wood-ticks,
horse-flies, deer-flies, and once the writer was besieged in his cabin
for a whole day by the common barn-fly. There are also the little
“no-see-’ems,” but they never last long. The arch-demon in the whole
list of abominations is the mosquito; the female mosquito. Mosquitoes
come early in the season, stay late, and work day and night.
One is sometimes asked about the danger from snakes and wild animals in
the North Woods. There are no poisonous snakes in the North Woods. The
most dangerous wild creature in summer is the mosquito, and the only
good mosquito is a dead mosquito. There is one thing that may be even
worse than mosquitoes, and that is the toothache; therefore, every wise
camper sees his dentist before he leaves town.
It is now fitting that we should again take up the thread of our story.