Now that the hordes of tent caterpillars have decreased somewhat, Prince George is now home to thousands and thousands of gross brown moths.
Coating various buildings around town, the moths lie in wait, quietly lying across doors and windows just waiting for their opportunity to fly in my face.
Moths don't bite or do much of anything at all but I still suspect them of being a part of a larger plot to make me hate the outdoors. Don't bother leaving a porch light on or you'll have to unlock your door in a fluttering haze of flying demons. Considering that moths are relatively benign on the insect scale, they still make me furious when they're around. In a room full of people and one moth, it will always fly right at me making me react like any other calm, thirty-something, modern women: I squeal and then run away like a girl.
Moth encounters are not my finest moments.
However, this column today is actually in praise of Prince George's finest weapon of mass destruction: the electric fly swatter.
My parents have an older model that keeps a low charge on the bars that will give you a small shock but the new models have a safety grate that prevent the occasional jolt on skin.
The fly swatter my favourite tool to handle the plethora of moths, mosquitos and the enormous houseflies that have erupted this summer.
Living in Prince George can be wonderful and frustrating at the same time. We live by beautiful forests and regularly have wildlife traipsing through our backyards.
We have beautifully hot summer days and awesome thunderstorms We also have swarms of caterpillars, giant ugly moths, enormous mosquitos and giant forest crickets.
A few weeks ago while my husband and I were under siege from mutant flies on our back deck, he yelled out: "There's always something that ruins everything in Prince George: snow, mosquitos, flies..."
As he was just about to work his way into a nice rant about everything that's bad in Prince George, I handed him the electric fly swatter and peace reigned in my household and dead bugs littered the deck.
It was a good day.
