CARLTON FLETCHER: There’s no bargaining with gnats … or Russians

I call that a bargain, the best I ever had.

— The Who

Lesson No. 1 when it comes to proposing deals with creatures of the wild: They don’t understand English … or French … or Farsi …

I tried to make such a deal over the weekend with a swarm of gnats. It didn’t work.

(And before I go any further, let me just say that these city gnats in Albany are wimps, incapable of being any more of an annoyance than, say, that guy in front of the Central Library who always shows you his “veteran’s card” before asking you for money. Maybe they think they’re more sophisticated, or maybe Albany’s gnats are gang gnats and only annoy people on certain blocks. But Albany gnats are the kind you can scare away by poking your bottom lip out and blowing upward. If you want to get the full gnat experience, you need to visit rural Lee County.)

I used a good allotment of my time off this past weekend cutting the at-certain-places waste-high grass at the Fletcher compound. (Note: If you’ve got a teenage boy around who is very good at taking care of such tasks and he goes off to college, unless he designates a replacement, it’s on you.) I’m not complaining about the chore; I actually love cutting grass — at least when it’s not 847 degrees outside.

When I walked out the door, I was immediately met by a swarm of gnats. I thought this to be a bit unusual, because the annoying parasites don’t typically bother me when I’m walking to my car to head to work in the mornings. (Of course, it could just be that the pests that hang out in rural Lee County prefer to sleep in a bit before they start annoying folks.)

After a few swats to try and dissuade their aggression, I told the gnats, “Look, if you’ll stay out of my ear holes and my nose and just dive-bomb me when I’ve stopped to wipe sweat, I won’t try and squish as many of you as is humanly possible. OK?”

I couldn’t get a representative gnat to shake on the deal, but I thought it was a fair proposal. The gnats, however, are like the Russians when it comes to keeping an agreement. I had to do most of my mowing with only one hand on the mower — and, yes, I am still using my $89 beat-to-hell-but-still-ticking push mower that is, without question, the greatest product ever manufactured in this country — because I was digging in my ear holes constantly, trying to get to the gnats that were vibrating their wings against my eardrums like Lars Ulrich playing “One.”

(I’m certain that family members who watched my growing aggravation had a good laugh at my antics, sitting in air-conditioned comfort as they were.)

I guess the worst of the ordeal was that I slapped on a good portion of Skin So Soft — the No. 1 gnat repellent in the free world — and these aggressive buggers took no notice. I think a couple of them were just sipping the stuff off my face like a cat lapping up a nice bowl of cream. (Note to self: Look for another No. 1 gnat repellent.)

I finally became so PO’ed, I found myself fantasizing that I’d catch THE ONE GNAT in all of creation that was like the golden child of all gnats, and that if I got him trapped in my ear hole that he’d send out a signal that would, essentially, say, “Everyone fly away! Head to the hiding grounds! This guy is not someone we need to mess with!”

But no.

They kept flying in my ear holes, and I kept squishing as many of them as I could, one-handed as I was. At the end of the day, as the sun finally started to set and the mosquitoes came out to take the gnats’ place as the No. 1 pests, I thought I’d had a pretty good go at the gnats. No, I didn’t get the golden-child gnat, but I managed to squish a good number of them to gnat hell.

Now, hopefully, they’ll be a little more reluctant the next time I take on the grounds. Say in about two weeks. Consider yourselves, my little gnat nemesises, forewarned.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.