witches whiskers

I want to record the date for posterity (and future avoidance planning). The black flies came out this week (May 8/9/10) and started biting the children in my family yesterday. We booked a trip to Europe for the month of June in hopes of avoiding the worst of the black flies (yes, I am willing to fly to a different continent to get away from them!) but I think they are out earlier this year. We should still avoid the worst of them plus the spring ticks and the huge, noisy, kamikaze June bugs. My mother assures me there are no bugs at all in their part of France!