MAC GORDON: Gnats are the bane of Southern existence

They are the absolute bane of my existence.

No, not federal politicians, although some I see and hear on the news programs make about as much sense as trusting Russia on anything.

And, no, not President Trump, who has enough troubles without having to worry about being the bane of a Georgia dirt farmer’s existence.

Certainly not the Alabama Crimson Tide football team because if anybody can beat them, it’s my team, the Ole Miss Rebels. Alabama doesn’t scare us. Ole Miss beat them twice in the last three games — and scared the bejesus out of them a third time in 2016 when we were way ahead until our wheels flew off in the second half.

Alabama fans should be aware that despite our troubles with the governing body of college athletics, the 2017 Ole Miss Rebels have plenty of football players left fully capable of kicking sand in your face during this year’s Drawl Bowl.

I am not referring to any of those entities as my daily tormentor. Nor am I thinking of lawnmowers, which run a very, very close second.

I am talking about South Georgia gnats. If you want and need a new bane to your existence to replace the one you already have, such as lawnmowers, move immediately to anywhere south of Macon, which is the so-called “gnat line,” and get a dose of these savage little beasts.

The “gnat line” is supposedly where the Piedmont meets the Coastal Plain in Georgia. I don’t know what that means scientifically, but I have heard since living in Georgia part-time for about nine years that anywhere south of Macon is the gnat line. North of there, no gnats? It seems implausible, and I doubt its verity.

Recently, a Georgia gentleman whose daily curse also is/are gnats asked me if we had gnats in Mississippi, my home state.

“Nope,” was my admittedly inelegant reply. “We’ve never had gnats in Mississippi. We made a decision about the time of our statehood in 1817 that we would put up with a lot, including our ranking of 50th on just about every socio-economic survey ever held in the United States, and losing football games to Georgia and LSU almost every year, but we will harbor no gnats.”

“Well, I don’t believe that,” the South Georgia gentleman told me. “I am going to do some research and see what I can find.”

“You know where the library is located,” I retorted. “Dig in.”

Another local citizen was asked, “Are the gnats bothering you this year?”

He replied, “No more than they have the past 72 years of my life. I mowed the yard yesterday for two miserable hours and the gnats chewed on me the whole time. Other than that, they’re not bothering me at all.”

Mississippi does have a few mosquitoes, but their number is not in the same neighborhood as Georgia’s gnats. It’s like when God created this place, He assigned 99 percent of all gnats to South Georgia.

Billions have been spent to eradicate the pests and how to keep them from inhabiting your nose, ear and mouth while out of doors for more than 10 minutes. This money has been completely wasted, and the gnats are laughing all the way to the bank.

In Mississippi, we spray mosquitoes on an almost daily basis with an insecticide whose power is just below that of gasoline. As kids we enjoyed chasing the bug-spraying vehicle and smelling its fog until it was out of sight. During residency in the swampy Mississippi Delta years ago, I once resorted to spraying the mosquito-laden walls with boll weevil poison, and it eradicated them, to no surprise. Perhaps these are factors in our socio-economic levels.

I don’t know why Georgia doesn’t have a similar spray program for gnats, considering the misery they cause. Maybe it’s simply because they know it was God’s plan for gnats from the beginning to make Georgia their spiritual home.

It’s kinda like Ole Miss beating Alabama in football. It’s just expected.

Mac Gordon lives near Blakely. He is a former reporter for the Albany Herald. He can be reached at [email protected].