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It reminded Trotter of the preoccupied tail swish of a horse worried by a black-fly. The side flick of one casual monosyllable was plainly all he was worth. Trotter calmly sat down. "I've been waiting for six months for a job on this paper," he began, quite seriously, quite deliberately. The man at the desk went on writing. The pen did not even stop. "Yes?"
Let us turn now to the subject of the smudge, known in Lower Canada as LA BOUCANE. The smudge owes its existence to the pungent mosquito, the sanguinary black-fly, and the peppery midge, LE MARINGOUIN, LA MOUSTIQUE, ET LE BRULOT. To what it owes its English name I do not know; but its French name means simply a thick, nauseating, intolerable smoke.
Mosquitos swarmed and circled in the fervent afternoon heat. Every moment the hand must be raised to scatter them; after a panic-stricken flight they straightway returned, reckless and pitiless, bent only on finding one tiny spot to plant a sting; with their sharp note was blended that of the insatiate black-fly, filling the woods with unceasing sound.
The "punkey," or "black-fly," as it is called, is a small, black gnat, about the size of a garden ant, and the bite of the insect often results very seriously. The midget is a minute little creature, and is the most everlastingly sticky and exasperating pest in the catalogue of human torments.
The only virtue the black-fly seems to have is its habit of quitting operations at sundown and leaving to other tormenters the task of keeping you awake at night. When the black-fly bites you will know it, and it will leave its mark, when it does leave, which must generally be by your help, for it holds on with commendable persistence.
It will not trouble you much except in the woods. =Black-Fly= The Adirondack and North Woods region is not only the resort of hunters, campers, and seekers after health and pleasure, but it is also the haunt of the maddening black-fly.
Here are groups of 'F.F.'s' puffing their long pipes and talking the everlasting 'd n nigger'; there are crowds of 'fifteenth amendments' laughing and frolicking like children, and here, too, the flea-bitten, mosquito-stabbed, black-fly tortured Doctor B. and Professor F., looking northward as the pilgrim to his loved and far-off Mecca.
From early spring until the middle of July or first of August the black-fly holds the territory; then it evacuates and is seen no more until next season, when it begins a new campaign. Under the name of buffalo-fly the black-fly is found in the west, where, on the prairies, it has been known to wage war on horses until death ensued death of the horses, not of the fly.
The smudge is called into being for the express purpose of creating a smoke of this kind, which is as disagreeable to the mosquito, the black-fly, and the midge as it is to the man whom they are devouring. But the man survives the smoke, while the insects succumb to it, being destroyed or driven away.
I was lying on my bed musing idly and watching a yellow woodpecker when suddenly I felt a severe bite on my shoulder. I imagined an ant had bitten me through my shirt. In a moment or so afterward I received, this time on my breast, another bite that left no room for imagination. There was some kind of an animal inside my shirt, and one that made a mosquito, black-fly, or flea seem tame.
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