Flies

Flies piss me off.  Always have.  Had beaucoup flies on the farm in MN.  That was a given, what with pigs, sheep, cows, chickens - and in the early days - horses, producing copious quantities of fly habitat.  I used to wipe 'em out by the 1000s back then: sprayer, swatter, fly ribbon, anything that worked.  The spray was DDT; now I'm bald, have CRS and can't throw lawn darts worth a darn.

We carry 2 flyswatters in the RV and one of  'em is right beside me as I type this, sitting outside in the shade.  Many flies will die here in the next 36 hours.  Sure, they can reproduce much faster than I can kill 'em but whacking them into oblivion gives me a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment nonetheless - especially if they're on my person or inside the RV.

Hat Rock Campground near Hermiston, OR is the scene of the fly slaughter.  Somewhere nearby there's livestock or rotting fruit or people with poor sanitation habits.  Could be all the above, rotten fruity people who never bathe and have goats.  Flies are attracted to stinky stuff.  I showered last night so don't know why they're landing on me; my deodorant?  They're not bugging Trish that much although she's the perennial Daily Special on the mosquito menu.

We'll spend 2 nights here, play golf and tour the area.  Hat Rock was named by Clark, of Lewis and Clark.  They did a lot of naming.  Closer to Portland, there's a large columnar rock, which L&C dubbed Cock Rock because it resembles a stiff dick.  Years later, a group of Portland women - influential, puritanistic, busy bodies with not enough to do - were successful in changing the name to Rooster Rock. 

 

Hat Rock

To this day, Portlanders (darn few) thank those ladies for saving the city from the sin and evil and corruption that would inevitably result from having such a lewd reminder of human anatomy in the vicinity.  Had I been around at the time, I would have led a protest movement, kicked it off by draping sail cloth over the rock, in the form of a condom.  You know, if that rock were in Africa, people would worship it as a great symbol of fertility.  Those ladies remind me of John Ashcroft, the attorney general that covered the Spirit of Justice statute.  What a screaming asshole!