Tormented by the question....

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Gotica, 11.01.2009 4:18

Dear forumchane, I understand that you are already tired of questions like " who is this?", "what is it?", but if not you , then who else will bring the uneducated to reason (((
I, as a veterinarian and generally a lover of all sorts of living animals, is not so easy to surprise, and cause a feeling of hostility the same. But somehow we came across an insect that caused me both of these feelings at once.
It was in the last days of August, my husband and I went to the village for mushrooms ( 160 km from St. Petersburg, north direction). At the edge of the forest, we were attacked by strange "flies" (as my husband called them). I fully understand that my clumsy explanation will seem ridiculous, but I will try. Quite large, slightly larger than a normal fly, dark brown in color,the body is flattened, broad, smooth, strong enough, the wings are webbed( if I'm not mistaken in the terminology - like flies), the legs are wide - very prehensile,quite massive, 6 pieces, have a head, chest and abdomen - short and rounded, on the back of the head, chest and abdomen. the head has impressive mandibles. Based on their behavior, I came to the conclusion that they are blood-sucking( perhaps mistakenly, but there are simply no other options). No repellents saved us from them, we have two boxer dogs, I spent a very long time picking these insects out of the dog's hair, which was very difficult, since they are flat and very tenacious. The dogs were covered in drops and wore tick collars.I also noticed that in the hair of the dogs they were already without wings. That is, they need these very wings only to achieve their goal? Sitting on the dogs, they very quickly crawled into the skin with the air of professionals. Moreover, when my husband and I came home, we took off a bunch of these insects, although we were packed to the fullest (since that area was very unfavorable in terms of ticks), the bulk was pulled out of our heads, but these "animals" were also located in places more strange under our clothes. My husband offered to take a picture , but I was determined not to do photo shoots( which I now regret). Perhaps my description will remind someone what kind of animal it is and how to escape from it. Since we have mushroom places, and remembering these "terrorists", I really don't want to go there in the summer. I would be very grateful if someone has any options.

This post was edited by Gotica - 11.01.2009 04: 55

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11.01.2009 15:03, amara

So it turns out that these creatures not only poison life, but also carry boreliosis Few ticks, and now you need to be scared of these ticks... In general, bloodsuckers seem to be adapting to human nutrition. When they appeared in our region in the 70s, they climbed on people in large numbers, but they never bit, only ran around in their hair and under their clothes. And now you just gape and it's ready - they're already eating you... So it's probably going to get even worse...

Both in Moscow (Losino-Ostrovsky Park) and in the Moscow region, there are especially many of them in August and September, I take them off every 10 minutes when I go deeper into the forest (and especially if you go not straight ahead, but along the moose trails). Sometimes I even brought it home, it was untidy of course, but I wasn't bitten yet.