So you know those outrageously giant horse flies.. the ones as big as your thumb? The ones that must hurt like mad when they bite because even the tiny ones are fairly painful?
While Val was in the cross ties this morning getting ready for a nice cool rinse, one of those mutant flies kept buzzing him. It eventually landed on his rump. I took a swipe (which functioned much like a karate chop), and the fly fell to the ground in two separate parts. That in itself would have been cool enough, as I love to kill these guys but try to avoid splatting them on my hand or my horse. But I digress...
So the two parts are laying on the ground in our wash rack. The legs on the back half are still wiggling... then I catch out of the corner of my eye another giant mutant horse fly buzzing around. I go to swat it and - check this out - it was the front half of the karate chopped fly crawling and flying to beat the band. This continued for over twenty minutes before it finally kicked the bucket. Amazing - and very creepy :)
Calm, Forward, Straight
Long time reader, first time commenting. :]
ReplyDeleteThey'll do that. We have TONS around where I live, and a sure-fire way to kill them that's common practice in my area; once you've gotten it off the horse, stomp on it. And I mean STOMP. You literally need to grind those things into the ground sometimes. We had one get into the corner of one of our horse's eyes last week...while there was a potential buyer on his back. Not fun.
We've also found that a good practice when you're out in the ring and a horse fly decides to take an interest in you but you can't manage to kill it is to get away from it as fast as possible. They generally won't follow you if you trot/canter your horse away, and they're usually gone by the time you make your way back around to that spot.
At the camp I go to we also have this wierd mutant breed of horse flies that we call Duck Flies, and they're EVERYWHERE around camp. They're like, twice the size, and those things do NOT die easily. We've had to resort to holding them into the fire for upwards of 5 minutes before they die sometimes. *shudder* Not fun at all.
The only thing good about the giant flies is that you can see and hear them coming, and they're pretty slow. Unfortunately they seem to rile the horses up before they even get to bite.
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting :)
We've got every type of fly (and lots of mosquitos too) every invented, I think, but the big horseflies are the worst - we call them B-52s. If you're riding the only safe thing is to get away fast. The horses in the pastures do the drop-and-roll or run away bucking!
ReplyDeleteMy first night with Val he gave some very agile super high bucks in response to the mutant flies. I asked him to please never buck like that when we were riding :)
ReplyDeleteNo that's a HUGE fly. When you can cut them in half and have the other half flying around. Oh my!
ReplyDelete