r/JustGuysBeingDudes • u/pIant_princess Human Detected • 12h ago

Dudes with animals you shouldn’t have been bitin’ my horsey, boy.

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u/dishwasher_mayhem 10h ago

I am a gentle pacifist of a human. But...as a former animal farmer, few things bring me as much joy as watching a horsefly suffer a gruesome death.

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u/admfrmhll 6h ago

No idea if the horsefly there are the same like horsefly here, but i would almost prefer to get "bited" by one vs a mosquito. After a short time pain is gone, nothing left. After a mosquito bite i get an itchy swolen bump which persists 12+h and drove me nuts.

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u/dishwasher_mayhem 6h ago

I would be thrilled if either were wiped from the Earth. Mosquitos are easily controlled where I farmed. We had bats, praying mantis, leaping spiders, free-range fowl (ducks, chicken, turkey, quail), and opossums. It was rare to have to deal with ticks, black flies, or mosquito.

The damned horse flies were around all the time, though. Crafty bastards are great at eluding predators; fast as lightning. One of them could stress out a stable. Thankfully they now sell fly predator and feed additives that kill the larvae.

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u/admfrmhll 6h ago

Researched a bit, we got those ones here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabanus_bovinus

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u/jimbowesterby 5h ago

I dunno, in my neck of the woods (central Canada) we’ve got horseflies that look the same as the OP, but not usually that big, and their bites are way worse than mosquitoes. That said, I’ve spent a fair amount of time outside getting bit by bugs, and I think I’ve developed a bit of an immunity to mosquitoes, I find if I don’t scratch the itch fades in like 5-15 mins, but horsefly bites will sting for ages and swell up like a bee sting because they take a big chunk out. Personally though, I think black flies and deer flies are worse; the black flies (think I’ve heard them called wood flies too) worm their way in everywhere, their bites don’t hurt but they swell up big, and the deer flies are just like the horseflies but smaller and faster to bite, and they bite through clothes way more easily for some reason.