No See Um's

"If you do not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants, on your people and into your houses." (Exodus 8:21)

Deb and I always look forward to sunny fall afternoons where we can just sit outside on the front porch or the back deck depending on the heat of the sun and the breeze. But lately we have been sequestered by the ongoing plague. No, I'm not talking about Covid but something more relentless: "No See Um's." 

I had never heard of these insects before and wish that I hadn't. They more accurately have been called, "No See Um's but Feel Um's" because by the time you see them they have already cannabalized you. 

The correct Dan Lute phylum name is, "Small Blackish Kinda-fleeish Irrititum" or Dasyhelea from the genus Dasyheleinae. Also called, Black Biting Midges (not midgets). 

I don't care what you call them...they hurt and they make the most wonderful time of the year miserable. I have never been praying so fervently for an early frost as I have this year. Death to the midges! 

It fells like the last two years the enemy has just wanted us to stay indoors, to be prisoners in our own homes, to rob of us of simple pleasures. But perhaps its just a natural phenomenon because of all the rain we have had. Or...could it be a divine plague once again calling us to repent. 

Covid. Seventeen year locusts. One hundred year flooding in Germany, Austria, and China. No toilet paper or canned carrots (still don't understand those two). Higher than normal temperatures. Please don't say, "Global Warming." Sorry, Greta. The Polar Bears will survive...or not. Life on planet earth will continue. Please devote your remaining years to curing Cancer or Alzheimer's Disease or Leprosy or finding actual Americans to be on America's Got Talent.

But I'm not sure life will survive if those Black Death Midges continue. I'm guessing this is the actual reason the dinosaurs went extinct. 

Truth be told we don't know what the truth is about these things. Are they simply a cyclical pattern of life? Is it something demonic in nature? Or a divine passiveness that is giving us a picture of what it will look like when He takes His hands off the sovereign wheel of creation? 

I've done my research. I've come to my conclusion. 

Essential oils: Lavender and Lemongrass. 

Regarding the rest...we'll just have to wait, see, and try not to itch.