Sandflies

Up until yesterday we had avoided the New Zealand curse that is the sandfly. The Maori goddess Hinenuitepo thought that the sights around the two islands were so beautiful that everyone would just stand agog and nothing would get done – so she created the sandfly to keep everyone moving.

Just with every other predator introduced into NZ (possums, rats, cats, et. al), it worked too well.

The sandfly is very much like a mosquito in that the female of the species sucks blood to feed. However, it differs from the common mozzie – as they are known here – in a few ways:

1- Sandflies are small enough to climb through your average flyscreen. We learned this by sleeping with the vents open. We awoke to swarms of sandflies feasting on our exposed extremities.
2- Sandflies think that DEET is a seasoning. It does not stop them from coming at you. In fact, I think that they see it as a challenge.
3- Sandflies are smart. Though they cannot bite you through your clothing, they will cling to it quietly so that you carry them into the car with you where you are likely to remove one or more layers of clothing and expose that ever-so-sweet flesh that they will then pounce on mercilessly.

The only thing that is saving us now is that it is winter and many of the wee beasties hibernate. With half of them asleep, they were unable to carry the rv away and had to content themselves with perching on the windows staring in at us like a bunch of little kids with their drooling faces pressed against the glass of the candy store.