I got bit by these guys for probably 30 hours total last week.
Is there anything ON EARTH worse than these sonofabitches? What kind of added value to the ecosystem do these guys bring to the table? I can’t believe they made Noah’s draft team before the flood. I can picture his reaction when he made the decision. He probably hesitated as he was batting down the hatches on the ark and said “oh shit I forgot those flies with the green heads that irritate the living fuck out of every other animal. Better grab a few.”
It’s insane that something so small can pack such a painful punch by biting you. If I could choose being bit by a fully grown pitbull or a greenhead…well I’d pick greenhead but it’s closer than you think. I can only assume these guys have a paper clip sized bloodsucker coming out of their mouth. This is too important not to google, let’s see what’s going on here:
“Their mouth parts include two sharp tools that look much like a pair of scissors. They jam those mandibles straight into your flesh. Then flex outwards severing every capillary and vein with which they come into contact. They use a salivary pump to douse the wound with an anticoagulant chemical. Then they use a syringe-like device that in their mouth to start sucking up your blood. All this happens in a split second. Then they are flying away full of your blood.”
“Not only do they punch a large hole in you, they gush in an antiseptic-saliva that stimulates blood flow. It burns and causes your nerves to respond with pain.”
GOOD STUFF THERE. Nothing says family day at the beach quite like “severing every capillary” and “salivary pumps.”
I also came across a few other disgusting facts in my research. Turns out only the females will bite you. And once they have extracted your blood they can use it to pop out a couple hundred babies. Almost vomited after reading that, but I think the most disturbing part of all is that these creepy fucks live as underground larvae in the salt marshes for all of the year and supposedly only hatch to wreak havok for 3-4 weeks annually. They spend those 3-4 weeks frantically trying to find blood hosts, which unfortunately is predominantly livestock and horses. That honestly makes me want to invent a fly repellent device thinking about some poor horse that gets bit 24/7 for a month straight.
Full confession, hand up – If PETA was at the beach with me during a few of those days, greenheads wouldn’t be the only thing swarming. There’d be some lawuits flying around too. I killed a handful of these bastards with a simple swat. But there was probably two handfuls that suffered a partial stunning followed by a slow painful death featuring drowning by OFF bugspray. Perhaps some dismemberment. A live burial or two. I also may or may have not done the thing where you let the suffering greenhead lay by your side as if to say “take a look and see what happened to your friend, motherfuckers.” (Just FYI that strategy proved ineffective).
That actually reminds me of one of my all-time favorite beach stories. I was working up in Jersey a few years ago and a coworker and I were driving along slowly as we approached a narrow bridge. Just before reaching the bridge I had noticed a fisherman had pulled a fairly large ray ashore. This thing was too big to be a skate, it was almost Steve Irwin sized. I admittedly don’t know shit about fishing, so I blurted out “people eat those??” My coworker yanked the wheel and made a quick exit after seeing what I saw. “I’ve heard of people eating those, but I highly doubt that’s what he’s doing” he said as we pulled up alongside the fisherman.
Upon closer review it was obvious that the fisherman was casually continuing to fish as the ray laid on the sand alive, but suffocating from the air. It was almost like he had forgotten he reeled it in.
“Hey man what’s going on here? You keeping that?” -coworker pointing to the ray
“Hey guys. Yep all good! Just punishing him a lil bit.” -fisherman
“What’s that now?” -coworker
“This guy here got caught on my line earlier and this is the second time I’ve reeled him in. So I’m just punishing him a little bit.”
Oh my god I must have laughed the entire way across that bridge and for the next 15 minutes of our drive. The guy was 100% DEAD SERIOUS. He was pissed that the ray had took his bait and the ensuing battle he had to fight to reel it in not once, but twice. He was doing the only thing he knew how to do in that situation – trying to teach an illiterate animal a lesson by the use of torture. This guy should have handed his resume to the CIA for immediate employment at Guantanamo Bay. I never followed up with the guy, but I am willing to bet my life that the ray did not make the mistake of biting that fishing hook a third time. In fact I’d say that’s probably the last floating worm that ray ever ate in its life.
Anyway – just to wrap things up with the greenheads…apparently the only thing you can do to fight them off is set a box trap which you can purchase online. There is no doubt in my mind that I will have one of those with me the next time I plan to sit on a beach. So the next time any of you hit an east coast shore in mid to late summer don’t say I didn’t warn you.