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When it comes to black flies, the sports-loving survivors of Bucksport can teach everyone in Maine a thing or two about coping with attacks.

By DEIRDRE FLEMING, Staff Writer June 1, 2008

BUCKSPORT — The people who live in this mill town beside the Penobscot River are as friendly as the bugs.

And here in eastern Maine, where built-up city blocks are in the minority, the black flies are pretty social.

"Last week I was playing a game in Lincoln, and they were so thick, I couldn't see. They were in my eyes when I was batting. I couldn't bat," said 14-year-old James Potter.

It's a funny thing, the relationship between the people of Bucksport and black flies.

The insects pester people statewide in late spring, and are by no means thickest in Bucksport.

But the folks here seem to put up with them more than most, because they love baseball -- and baseball season happens to fall during black fly season.

"Black flies are just something you put up with in Maine," said Bob Carmichael as he reached into his pocket for a can of Off! during a Bucksport baseball game two weeks ago.

"I was the coach for 20 years, then the athletic director for 15. Then, I fought them for years umpiring. Now I fight them on the golf course," Carmichael said. "You'd think after a number of years, we'd stay indoors. But we love sports."

For those Mainers who (incredibly) don't know what a black fly is: It's a small, swarming, bloodsucking creature that breeds in moving fresh water and comes out in springtime. There are several different species in Maine. (Lucky us.)

The black flies are not large, although they have been jokingly called the state bird. They are, in fact, so harmlessly dainty looking, you could miss them -- if they didn't chomp into any exposed skin and draw blood as if from a severed vein, that is.

So it is, small as they are, that black flies continue to grow in people's imaginations in proportion to their legend.

Ask any native Mainer who has spent time around fresh water about black flies, and five bucks says they will laugh at you.

"If you're a true Mainer, you kind of put up with them. You can't run inside and hide," said Bucksport native and baseball mom Rosie Fish, who added: "They'll suck you dry."

Indeed, in this town where high-school baseball fans line the outfield fence with 30 to 40 cars and trucks to take shelter from the black flies, these dreaded dark devils of spring are accepted and hated all at once.

"They're part of the town," said Kevin Potter, 38, another Bucksport native. "But, yeah, they'll lug you off."

'Nuff said.

URBAN SAFE ZONES

Maine city dwellers who never go camping or hiking may not know the black fly. That's because you won't find it in built-up, paved-over areas.

Black flies are aquatic animals --er, insects -- that breed in cold, fast-moving fresh water.

"They like cooler temperatures, so that's why cities are not good habitat, with the pavement," said Kathy Murray, an entomologist with the Maine Department of Agriculture.

And black flies, repulsively filthy as they are to some, actually need clean fresh water.

"I think since the Penobscot River has been more cleaned up, they are more of an issue there," said Leon Tsomides, an aquatic biologist with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

With so many lakes, ponds and rivers in the state, black flies seem to start swarming everywhere in May. By June, they're here.

Inevitably, Robin Follette, who runs the Maine Nature News Web site in Washington County (www.mainenature.org), gets calls in the spring from out-of-staters who have heard black fly myths.

"It's not loons or moose or leaf peepers that we get the most questions about. It's black flies," Follette said. "This month, 46 percent of the searches are on black flies."

Most of the black fly questions she gets are fueled by fear.

"I think black flies are portrayed as this horrible monster that is going to eat you alive," she said, before pausing and adding, "Oh, that's accurate."

But...