"Greenhead season plagues Mass. ocean towns" by Billy Baker | Globe Staff, July 22, 2012
IPSWICH – In Ipswich, locals take a peculiar pride in the severity of their problem.
“They have mouth parts that slash a hole in the skin to create a pool of blood. Then they spit their saliva into the human to act as an anticoagulant. Then they have other mouth parts that sponge up the blood,” said Gabrielle Sakolsky, an entomologist and the assistant superintendent of the Cape Cod Greenhead Fly Control District, which has also seen greenheads in considerably higher numbers than in recent years.
The pain comes not from the bite itself, Sakolsky said, but from the body reacting to the chemical in the bugs’ saliva.
The greenhead — a type of horsefly named for its bright green eyes — can ruin a beach day in towns all up and down the coast, wherever there is a large salt marsh for them to breed in. From Duxbury Beach to Sandy Neck in Barnstable to Nauset Beach in Orleans, they are a regular, and detested, part of July....
But for all the suffering they inflict and the golf ball-size welts they leave behind, there is revenge to be had. “My friend killed 25 in one day, and arranged them in a little cemetery,” said Lily Savoie, a 19-year-old lifeguard at Crane Beach....
Just don't ever let the kid near a position of control or power, 'kay? I sure hope he isn't dressing up like a cop.
The best weapon against them are the traps....
Time to break free from the trap of reading the Globe.
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