Opinion: Go away millers; you guys are unbearable

I’m on the hunt for a grizzly bear.

No, I don’t want a head to mount on my wall, or a rug to cover the floor in front of my fireplace.

I want the real thing, alive and hungry, and here’s why.

I’ve learned recently that grizzly bears love to eat moths — by the tens of thousands, they say — and have I ever got a banquet waiting.

If you don’t live in the country, you may not even be aware that our annual springtime visitors — the miller moths — have arrived.

They are having a banner year.

Humor me as I attempt to explain, even though they must be experienced to be fully abhorred.

I was awakened early Saturday morning by what I first thought was the sound of distant thunder.

I was elated. Rain had not been predicted, and yet here was an unexpected pre-dawn thunderstorm. There is no finer way to wake up.

Then the distant rumble continued. And continued.

Gradually my sleep-fogged brain cleared, and I knew I was not hearing thunder.

Rather, my unwelcome alarm clock was the sound of hundreds of miller moths smacking into a nearby door as they attempted to escape from the narrow space between that door and the attached outside screen door.

I have many names for these dusty inch-long moths, but we are a family newspaper so I will spare you.

Technically, they are “Euxoa auxiliaris,” which I think may be Latin for “filthy flying spitball.” But my Latin is rusty, so no guarantees.

Millers are the moth form of the army cutworm.

As worms, they are a crop pest, with a hankering for things like alfalfa and wheat.

As moths, they can suck all the joy out of life for a solid month if you live in an old house in the country in our part of the world.

I need not tell you that we didn’t have a lot of joy going on around here even before they arrived.

We have these moths by the thousands here. I do not exaggerate. Inside my house, with a war plan that begins each day at dawn with the roar of a vacuum cleaner, I can keep the numbers in the hundreds. Again, I do not exaggerate.

When millers are startled or disturbed, they fly blindly, smacking into everything and everyone around them and discharging a reddish-brown fluid called meconium. (I also have other words for that.) It stains windows, walls, and clothing.

Here is a short list of things you do not want to do during miller season:

• Wash windows

• Watch television or use any electronic device

• Turn on lights

• Enter or exit any of the external doors to your house

• Live in eastern New Mexico

So where does the grizzly bear come in?

Well, according to a fact sheet on miller moths published by the Colorado State University extension service, grizzly bears “feed on the fat-rich moths” making them an “important part of the grizzly bear’s diet.”

And so, I am on the hunt for a grizzly bear. A famished one.

Dinner is fluttering and ready.

Betty Williamson’s relentless sense of optimism is being sorely tested. Reach her at:

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