Black fly season in Maine is those weeks in late spring and early summer when you are demoted to the bottom of the food chain. Black flies have been called the piranhas of the north woods and live up to that name by attacking any warm blooded flesh that might serve to appease its ravenous appetite. And just like you wouldn't go near a river teaming with piranha, so should you not go into woods teaming with black flies.

But wait, there's more. Besides black flies, there are also mosquitoes and no-see-ums to contend with and we'll get to those. A black fly, though not the most deadly, will inflict the most injury to a body part before moving on to its next helpless victim.

A black fly is any member of the family simuliidae of the culicomorpha infraorder. They are related to the ceratopogonidae, chironomidae and thaumaleidae. More than 1,800 species of black flies are known, according to researchers at the University ofFlorida.

Like the mosquito, only female black flies feast on flesh. The mosquito, though, inserts a tube-like proboscis into the skin to drink. Black flies have razor sharp, jagged-jaw-like mouths that rip and tear into the flesh for a meal. The flies bite, tearing a hole into the skin, and then feed on the pool of blood that forms in the hole they made. You can be left with an oozing wound long after the fly has finished and gone, thanks to a powerful anticoagulant it also injects into the bite sight.

No one can estimate how many black flies actually hatch each year, as it is dependent on a few factors. Suffice it to say many billions is probably a conservative guess. A dry spring can dwindle their numbers down to the just the billions. They get in your hair, they get in your ears, they fly up your nose and get into your mouth. A swarm of ravenous black flies can leave a victim with dozens of bloody pox-like wounds that take days -- even weeks in some cases -- to heal.

Not bad for a gnat that isn't even one-sixteenth of an inch long. Black flies, however, work a pretty steady nine to five job. They will not feed after dark.

Black flies have been around for about 160 million years. Even the first European explorers were overwhelmed by the ravenous insects.

"The worst martyrdom I suffered in this country," wrote a priest traveling in the North Country in 1624.

Some victims have allergic reactions that cause swelling at the bite site. In North America, black flies do not transmit any serious human illnesses. They can, however, pass some infections among livestock. In the Tropics, the flies transmit a parasitic worm that causes Onchocerciacis, the most common cause of blindness, via Robles disease, in the world.

Tis the season (NOT). Just when we think it's safe to go out and take in the beauty of nature, we're descended upon by swarms of ravenous, flesh-eating gnats. But there are some precautions you can take. Wear light colored clothing. Use a bug repellant with DEET. And don't wear scented lotions and creams. You can actually build up immunity to black fly bites over time, so if you've noticed they aren't bothering you as much as they used to, perhaps that is why.

Black flies pale next to the world's most deadly bug, the mosquito. Though the black fly's annual appearance is short lived, the mosquito stays with us all summer long. And like the black fly, it's the female of the species that seeks you out for her meal of blood.

There are more than 3,000 different species of mosquitoes throughout the world, though here in the United States we only have to deal with 176 species. Mosquitoes are insects belonging to the order diptera, and the family of small, midge-like flies: the culicidae.

Mosquitoes can carry Eastern equine encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, La Crosse encephalitis, West Nile Virus, Western equine encephalitis, Dengue fever, malaria, Rift Valley fever and yellow fever.

Unlike black flies, mosquitoes won't crawl under your collar or up your pant legs to get to skin. Wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt to cover up the larger vulnerable spots. Mosquitoes are also attracted to dark clothing. Candles and incense work toward keeping them at bay, but not if there's a breeze. Your best bet is a little bug repellant.

Did you know that Off brand bug repellent does not have an expiration date on it? I found an old rusted can once going through a box of camping stuff and sure enough it worked just fine. Don't waste your money on electronic bug zappers. Doesn't matter if it says zapper, vaporizer, eradicator, exterminator, or annihilator on the label -- it's just not effective. But it does make some noise as the bugs fry on its grid, giving you a little satisfaction, if you're into that.

And why is it that you've done nothing but swat at the pesky little suckers all night and the person next to you is smiling and bragging about how they haven't been bitten once? Turns out it has a lot more to do with you than you think. First off, stop breathing; mosquitoes are attracted to carbon monoxide. Okay, just kidding about the breathing thing, but the part about carbon monoxide is true.

The next thing that attracts mosquitoes is body odor. If you're going to spend an evening on the porch, or at the camp, a prerequisite is a good bath. And just like with black flies, avoid using smelly soaps and lotions. Now the next thing, believe it or not, is straight out of the Mainer's Handbook: beer and Limburger cheese. Yuppers, tadoddle-berries, beer will attract mosquitoes.

Now what about that Limburger cheese? There are not a lot of people in Maine that seem to have a taste for Limburger cheese. But here's the science of it all. Limburger cheese produces a distinct bacterium that gives it that unusual taste and smell -- especially the smell. It turns out that your feet produce the same bacteria after wearing the same pair of socks more than a couple of days in a row. Limburger cheese = bacteria = smelly feet = more mosquitoes on you. Conclusion: take a bath, don't drink beer outside and change your socks regularly.

Studies have shown that mosquitoes are more attracted to bigger people as opposed to smaller. More CO2 I guess, and they are more attracted to women than men. Now here's a little tidbit, a full moon can cause mosquito bites to increase as much as 500 percent.

Finally, we come to my personal favorite of the biting bug world, the no-see-um. They are aptly named because you simply don't see them. They are incredibly small and almost transparent, but they have no less of an appetite than their cousins. No-see-ums consider anything with blood a meal. They have even been known to feed on black flies and mosquitoes. Payback is good, and that's why no-see-ums are my favorite insect.

No-see-ums are attracted to a human host in the same ways a mosquito is, but repellants are not effective against no-see-ums, so keep that 5-year-old can of Off on the shelf. CO2 traps do offer a degree of interdiction, since CO2 is one of the things that attract them. No-see-ums are so small they can pass right through the mesh on a screen door, so no fair hiding inside. Many tent manufacturers offer a fine mesh screen that is marketed as a no-see-um screen, to help with that problem.

As for these three scourges of summer, nobody is safe and there's no where to hide. Just try to grin and bear it, summers aren't that long in Maine anyway.