What is worse then Gulls Stealing Food from a Track?!

Being attacked while running the track by June Bugs!

As temperatures reached into the mid-30s during the days this weekend, I elected to track in the evening.

Since finding prime tracking locations in the city of Oakville can be challenging to say the least, I was excited to find a new prime location to track in a couple days ago.

This evening at dusk Dieter was half starved, and me with my ziplock full of food, drove out to the new field. I lay the track and the grass was plush and pretty good conditions for having such a hot dry day just past. I was pretty thrilled with the find because no one was around - again, unusual for a busy city with a fairly 'outdoorsy' population.

Aged the track only 10 minutes and pulled Dieter out of the car to run the track. We were only about 50 paces in and I suddenly heard the buzzing of these hideous critters. Hoping they were in the distance was over quite quickly - they ended up swarming us.

They stick in your hair, your clothes and anywhere they can cling on. HOWEVER - the good news is that Dieter despite this onslaught, kept tracking!! Really well I might add. I was about 10 feet behind him dancing around in desperate and futile attempts to fend off these nasty little beetles. Only once did he look back at me, like "what the heck are you doing?" The passerby's must have thought I was having a seizure or something.

We finally reached the end (which seemed like an eternity) - Dieter platzed - I dumped his sardines on the grass and sprinted to the car. He lay calmly eating his reward and came trotting up after finishing. I was yanking off layers of gear. After I yanked off my t-shirt, I was thrilled to count about 10 june bugs in my shirt, 8 still in my hair and an unknown number crawling around my training vest. Thankfully the little guys don't bite!!

Then getting home to research them on Wikipedia - I find that there is only a morsel of information....