or advice, Harvey Hobbs is always willing.
This April the lake ice took away the dock on Blueberry Island, making it extremely difficult for the Hobbses to land on their steep rock shoreline. The dock had simply disappeared, another victim of the destructive power of spring breakup. Here, then, was an opportunity for us to pay back the Hobbses for their unerring helpfulness. We set out on a morning mission in our boat to find the missing dock and return it to its rightful place. After some searching, we spied an intact, sixteen-foot section of the dock on an uninhabited stretch of the north shore.
The dock was wedged high on the boulder-strewn beach. My wife and I struggled to get it afloat, using twelve-foot rails as pry bars. My father, skippering the boat, attached a line to the stringers and pulled. We gradually worked the heavy thing loose and got it floating. My wife jumped into the bow of the runabout to help guide us through the many shoals. I stayed on the dock-turned-raft.
Off we went, towing the dock across the calm lake with me balancing on the deck boards. If I moved towards the bow, the front of the dock dipped below the water. If I moved to the port or starboard, I found I could help manoeuvre the clumsy barge to the left or right. Only the back middle third of the dock stayed high and dry.
Imagine my consternation when, as I stood regally on the raft with the wind blowing through my hair, I looked down and saw an enormous spider standing beside me. He looked like my pet dog sitting primly there at my feet. If I was captain of this vessel, he was my first mate. He was huge and ugly. I wouldn’t say he was as big as my hand (that would be an exaggeration) but he wasn’t much smaller. I was naturally startled, which is why I let out a little screech, a piercing whelp that thankfully went unheard over the buzz of the boat motor. I quickly regained my composure and almost decided to squish him, sending his body to a watery grave.
I admired his bravery, however. I admired his survival instincts. He had joined me on this little adventure, so who was I to repay his trust by stamping down on him with my water shoes. Besides, I felt like Pi on a raft alone with his Bengal tiger. Oh, you may laugh, me comparing this little insect to a ferocious killer cat, but spiders can be extremely dangerous, too.
So the journey continued for this spider and me, two castaways separated from certain death by a few dry boards. I kept a watchful eye on him — and sensed that he did the same with me. When I looked nervously down, he craned his little head and peered skyward. I smiled, and he returned the grin. The trip seemed to last for most of the day, but in reality took about an hour. Finally we circled around Blueberry Island and motored into the little nook to return the dock to its old resting spot.
The boat crew released the tow rope and threw me a paddle so I could steer our dock into position. As I leaned over to paddle, the dock dipped under the lake water. The spider headed for high ground, which just happened to be up my leg. I swatted him.
Now, before you get upset at my reaction, thinking that I had killed my faithful travelling companion, when I say “swatted him” I simply mean I brushed him off my leg. True, my action did send him catapulting into the lake, causing him to thrash about in a dance of survival, but it was a predicament that was easily rectified with a gently placed paddle blade. The arachnid climbed aboard, and I placed him gently on shore. Without a word of thanks, he scurried off.
I hope that Harvey is happy to have his dock back, and that he does not mind that I have added to the spider population of his island. I’m sure he will happily bound off his dock, up onto the island, and walk face first into a sticky spiderweb. Perhaps it was a pregnant female.
Flying Piranha
My wife is from Vancouver. There are no blackflies in Vancouver — none in the whole of British Columbia, really. There are plenty of mosquitoes. There are little gnats we call no-see-ums that get under the brim of your hat and bite at your forehead. There are wasps and hornets and bees, and ticks that drop off the spring willow and burrow into your neck. Big horseflies dart around your head, avoiding your windmilling arms, driving you slowly crazy.
There are biting red ants that crawl up your socks and nip at your ankles when you unwittingly sit on a rotten log or lie out in the grass on a warm summer’s day using their anthill as a pillow. There are many minor nuisances in our western province, but none that can measure up to the ferocity of the blackfly. Blackflies prefer the rocks, lakes, bush, and swift-flowing streams of Muskoka. They are a little bit like cottagers that way.
While I have fond memories of these miniature flying piranha from my youth, when we move back to cottage country in the summer of 2005, my wife has yet to be introduced.
“There is something wrong with Jenna,” cries my wife. “She’s bleeding from the back of her head.” She holds our six-year-old daughter close to comfort her, but her panic and the mention of blood serves only to agitate the youngster, sending her into tears.
I wander over to have a look. Little trickles of blood stream down from behind each ear.
“Did you hit your head?” my wife is asking.
“Blackflies,” I pronounce. Of course, I am always quite pleased to know something about something. Especially to know some little tidbit that my wife does not. It happens so rarely.
“Blackflies did that?” she asks incredulously — and then she takes a swat at a deer fly that has landed on our daughter’s back. “Well, there is one blackfly that won’t be bothering you again,” she states haughtily, as the crumpled fly falls dead to the grass.
“No, no,” say I — and I point to a tiny little flying speck that buzzes Jenna’s hair.
My wife squints at the minuscule gnat and then stares at me as if I am quite mad. The little black insects cloud around my head as well, landing on the hairline at the back of my neck. I stupidly let one take a huge chunk out of my hide, just to prove my point. She watches the blood flow, and then starts to laugh. Cheered by the sudden gaiety, my young daughter also giggles at my misfortune, and the two ladies trot happily into the cottage to clean up the bloody smears, leaving me to wave my hands frantically at a swarming, invisible enemy.
While blackflies love me, they do not seem to care for my wife. When we work around the cabin, she does so in shorts and T-shirt, while I cover up, flail my arms about inanely, and constantly twitch and shake like a dog. Why blackflies prefer some people to others, I do not know. Perhaps it is because, though she is of the fair sex, I have the fairer skin. I have told her that her blood must be sour — to which she retorts that most flying insects do seem to swarm over horse droppings in the field.
The Game of Tape and Ladders
Okay, here’s the deal: I’m swinging on the cabin’s main log beam, looking a lot like Cheetah, the chimpanzee. Perhaps I am dating myself here. Cheetah was Tarzan’s pet monkey in those 1930s black and white Tarzan movies, the chimp who was so talented at swinging on branches and from tree to tree. Maybe my audience for this column is a little younger; I should have compared myself to Rafiki, the famous blue-faced baboon of Lion King fame — or perhaps George of the Jungle.
Anyway, I’m wasting time here, and time is something I don’t feel I have a lot of in my current predicament — so back to my story …
I’m swinging on the big log purloin that runs the length of our cottage. I was cleaning the large upper front window when the ladder underneath me essentially collapsed.
Swinging around, holding on for dear life, and looking down at the floor far beneath, I sense that my wife is standing there laughing at me. She seems to be asking, “What do you think you are doing?” Then, perhaps showing a tiny bit of compassion, she seems to be asking if I’m all right.
