paying the price for paradise

Ah, an astoundingly beautiful evening at the lake.

The kind of picture one is loath to post on FB lest one invoke any haters.

The still, pure, air. The gentle bird calls. The pinking sky.

Sigh.

But what's this? This persistent buzzing, this cloud marring my perfect sunset?

Jesus Christ, there's something in my eye!

Quick! Indoors! Close windows, turn off lights, seal the cat flap!

Every year at the neighbourhood Christmas Carols us lake-dwellers sing a reworked version of the '12 Days of Christmas'.

We trill through it, subbing pelicans for partridges and dancing grebes for maidens and then come together in gusto for the favourite line:

'Five Thousand Miggies!!!!'

It is miggie season at the lake. Great columns of them hover in mass orgies of procreation, buzzing in disgusting sensual miggie delight. They just live for a day, dying in ecstasy and hemorrhaging their insides all over our white walls, garden furniture and any sad towel or item of clothing foolishly left outside.
They bring with them spiders, toads and giant cobwebs. They pollute our wine, our nostrils and the very air we breathe.
They are the proverbial fly in our pie.

Luckily they don't bite, and they only last a few weeks. But yeah, paradise could do without them!