Flies are biting
The Downashore team reports throughout the summer on the latest news, information and musings from up and down the coast.
Flies are biting
Above, fleeing the beach in droves...
So in theory, the place to be in this week's heat would seem to be the beach. Right? In theory. In reality, the beach today and yesterday was, by all accounts, downright miserable, with reports of biting flies coming from Long Beach Island, Ventnor, Margate and, not as bad, North Wildwood. I guess you'd call these pests see-ems, as opposed to the ones that sneak up on you, because this strain of Jersey Shore black fly boldly march up like parasitic beach bag checkers, spread out their fly towels and act like you'd invited them to hang out around your ankles for the afternoon. It was a war out there, really. One friend fleeing the beach after about an hour - unprecedented for this local beachfly - described reading her book, looking up and seeing a mass of black flies around her ankles, biting, and saying to herself, "What the heck am I doing out here?" And then, like the people above, abandoning beach. Or heading back into the water, which at least was warm and offered a brief respite from the blood suckers. The land breeze is, of course, the culprit, and so we can only hope it shifts by tomorrow, bringing the breeze again from off the ocean, making the beach again the proverbial "cooler at the shore" and sending the flies back to the mainland, or at least to Brigantine, where they belong.
Ahh Jersey...— Phillyguy21- ..as opposed to Philly, where there is lead flying through the air. Mosquitos don't sound too bad.— bjps1353
- In Brigantine the flies are green heads and can be viscous. Spray on some skin so soft and you are golden.
Comment removed.- "Spray on some skin so soft and you are golden." The original SSS was not formulated as a bug spray it's merely an urban myth. Avon now makes a SSS with a repellant.— KatB
Inquirer Staff Writer Jacqueline L. Urgo has spent every summer of her life at the Jersey Shore, and has lived there year-round for nearly 30 years, even fulfilling one of her bucket list dreams by once living in a house by the sea.
Since 1990, she has covered the waterfront for The Inquirer — from the Atlantic to the Delaware Bay shore — and some of the mainland in between. Along the way, she amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of this tear-it-down-and-build-it-back-up region, delving into the history and the hype of a place with a lot of unexpected stories to tell. Email her here: jurgo@phillynews.com.
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All blog items posted before Feb. 1, 2009, can be accessed at http://blogs.phillynews.com/philly/downashore
