Dragonflies vs mosiquitos

I took the Buntster for a walk yesterday, it was a beautiful afternoon. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and there was a nice cooling breeze. I coated myself with deet before leaving the house to be sure, but I still expected to be attacked by mozzies as soon as I walked out of the house. I was not disappointed. Anyway, Bunty and I went up to Churchill park, the river has burst its banks there, and last time we were there large areas of the park were under water. Well yesterday the river had receeded probably by about 3 feet. So although there were still lots of large areas of water on the grass, there were also large areas of muddy grass. To be quite honest, the park stank of rotting vegetation, but Bunty didn't seem to mind.

I let her off the leash (illegal in Winnipeg I know, but I thought what the hell, everyone else lets their dog off the leash) and she headed off into the bushes. Well of course she picks up the trail of a bunny and off she went, disregarding my whistling and calling, until eventually she lost track of the rabbit. I wasn't too worried, except she was right by the river, and I was worried she might fall in. The current is very swift with the extra water, and I was worried she might get washed away. She didn't and we soon settled in to a routine of her running head and then running back to where I was.

By the time we got past the bridge to the larger areas of grass Bunty was having a whale of a time. And I was being bombarded by dragonflies! Thousands of them. It reminded me of last summer in Maryland when the cicadas came out (the ones that come out every 17 years), and there were so many of them that they swarmed around and you had to wave them away from your face. I had to wave the dragonflies away from my face. But sadly there were still not enough to keep the mozzie population down to a tolerable level. I was attacked by mozzies constantly, unless I was in the direct sun. It is a great shame, but the Province has now ordered the city to fog the entire metropolitan area. This means that the dragonflies and fireflies, and probably a lot of the small song birds, will also be killed off. As much as I admire the attempts of the city to treat the mozzie plague with biological predators, clearly it didn't work this time around. I wonder how much the rain, that we have had so much of, had to do with that.

So even though there are thousands upon thousands of dragonflies flying around the area, they are still not a match for the mozzies.

Meanwhile, Bunty got to run, play in the grass, and splash through the water left behind by the over flowing river. Suffice it to say that she still wanted to go out for a walk last night.