This is written for anyone who has ever suffered at the hands (or, more accurately, the mouths) of the Highland midge. Over the centuries the bear and the wolf have been hunted to extinction in the Highlands of Scotland, but it has never been remotely within the scope of possibility that its most voracious predator could ever be removed from that most remarkable of landscapes.<\/p>\n
\u2018Neath oceans glides the great white shark,
\nIn Africa, best fear the dark,
\nWhere night is torn with eerie howls,
\nWhere prides of lions, hungry, prowl.
\nThere\u2019s crocs from Oz, there\u2019s snakes there, too,
\nThey\u2019ll bite, they\u2019ll tear, they\u2019ll feed on you.
\nBut the greatest bloodfest of them all
\nTakes place \u2018tween Scotland\u2019s spring and fall.<\/p>\n
By loch, in glen, on rocky ridge,
\nThere lurks the evil Highland midge.
\nAs sun descends this fearsome pack
\nIn squadrons, moves in to attack.
\nWith anguished yelps and flailing arms
\nUnwary tourists learn the charms
\nOf this fierce demon of the night,
\nWhich doesn\u2019t bark, it only bites.<\/p>\n
The Romans came, they saw, they conquered,
\nThen thought, \u201cWho lives here must be bonkers!\u2019
\nHistory books, they don\u2019t point out,
\nBut I know it was the midge, no doubt,
\nThat made them leave, and southbound haul
\nTo build the dyke called Hadrian\u2019s Wall.
\nClans, battles, kings\u2014all come and gone,
\nBut the midge, it just goes on and on.<\/p>\n
Old Scotland\u2019s remote north and west,
\nRuled by this savage, tiny pest,
\nHas stores that sell sprays, potions, lotions
\nAll geared to the quite absurd notion
\nThat if you buy them, then all day
\nThey\u2019ll keep the hellish hordes at bay!
\nBelieve that, then you\u2019re not too bright,
\nThey still get through, and still they bite.<\/p>\n
How horrid, awful, bad, it feels
\nYour face a mass of crimson weals.
\nThe fat, the thin, the poor, the rich,
\nThey all fall prey and how they itch!
\nThe midge cares naught for class nor creed
\nIt just sees all as one more feed!
\nTo miss this slaughter just don\u2019t roam,
\nStay safe inside, stay safe at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is written for anyone who has ever suffered at the hands (or, more accurately, the mouths) of the Highland midge. Over the centuries the bear and the wolf have been hunted to extinction in the Highlands of Scotland, but it has never been remotely within the scope of possibility that its most voracious predator…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,102],"tags":[265],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emancipation-liberation","category-issue-15","tag-author-rod-macgregor"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":5297,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":934,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}