Tails From Provence

Last month, I was saying things like “Ah, sure isn’t the drought grand.  There’s way fewer flies around.”

It’s true – there was a noticeable fall in the numbers of taons, or biting flies.  For sure, there were some around.  When The Girls were in the field beside Flurry and Aero, I noticed how they were plagued by flies, whereas my two lads were completely fly-free.  I put it down to the fly spray I’ve been using, Novaclac, and I’ve been smugly spraying them every morning and congratulating myself on the fact that I haven’t needed to put Aero’s fly rug on at all this year.

BUT.  Now there seems to be a race of supertaons around.  They are drought resistant and very hungry.  Even a combination of Novaclac and Neem oil has not been enough to deter them, and for the last few days, poor Aero has been looking miserable.

So I cracked.

This is the cheapy zebra rug I bought earlier this year.  I like it.  He seemed to have relief from the flies straight away.  But ten minutes later, there was one persistent bugger buzzing around his head, so I slathered him with Neem oil on his exposed bits and that seemed to help.

Flurry is generally less bothered by flies than Aero, but even so, he must have had twenty or thirty taons zooming around his belly this morning.  So I put Aero’s old (Bucas) zebra rug on him.

The trouble was, I’d removed the belly flap last year because I felt it made the rug go squiffy on Aero.  It’s currently in a box or a bag Somewhere in depths of the garage.  I have to find it, because all 20 or so taons which had been hovering around Flurry’s tummy when I put the rug on proceeded to fly UP and became trapped between the rug and Flurry’s body.  I squished a whole pile of them, then I applied a generous amount of Neem oil along his belly, legs, nether regions, neck and ears.

I’ll see how they are doing later.