Nature makes me look foolish

I know it's popular to be green and be in love with the earth, and I agree with it (for the most part) but come on, people, I think we are starting to get blinded by our love of unspoiled habitat and clean water.  Let's not forget that Mother Nature has a really ugly side:

  Nature's ugly side

She needs to be put in her place every once in a while, and if that has to be done with deadly chemicals SO BE IT.

 (Nature also has a stupid-looking side)

"Why are you so mad at Nature now?" you ask me.  It's the usual, spiders.  Nothing can ruin a stay at the cabin like a gigantic spider crawling across the dock 6 inches in front of your face as you are coming up the ladder in the dark.  Did it make me scream in a manner that was totally out of proportion to the event?  Why, yes it did.  Did it make my sisters think I was being brutally murdered by "Skeleton Hand" who Amy is pretty sure lives under the dock?  Yes.  Did it make me have the heebie jeebies and totally ruin my relaxation from the sauna?  YES.  Was I awake spastically slapping random itches and lint for several hours?

I think you know the answer.

While I was awake, I was mad at myself for being so afraid of something so small and supposedly beneficial.  As I've been told a million times (by smug know-it-alls), we NEED the spiders because if they weren't here we would be completely overrun by other bugs. But why do we need the other bugs?  I spent the afternoon on the dock fighting with ONE fly that kept landing on me over and over and over and over.  Annoying.  You'd think the fly would get tired of doing that, but it didn't. I tried to ignore it by thinking of how people in Australia are so overrun with flies that they totally ignore them even when they are crawling around in the snot trails going from their baby's noses to their mouths.  But I couldn't because my friend Pete sent me something the other day that said,

"Houseflies feed on feces, open sores, sputum, and moist decaying organic matter such as spoiled food, eggs and flesh. Houseflies can take in only liquid foods. They spit out saliva on solid foods to predigest it, and then suck it back in. They also regurgitate partly digested matter and pass it again to the abdomen."

Enchanting!  Are you still in love with nature?

When I wasn't slapping at that one annoying fly that preferred to spit and predigest on me over everyone else including wet dogs, I was scratching the mosquito bites on my ankles.

Besides spreading disease and being food for terrifying spiders and equally horrifying bats, what good are the flies and mosquitoes? I know that being in favor of causing the extinction of species is not a popular position to take in the current cultural climate, but really, would anyone be sad to see flies and spiders (and bats, and pandas, and leeches) gone?  Think of all the good outdoor time you could have without them.

"I sleep in your patio umbrella and scare the life out of you when you go outside to read your book!"