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How about this local freaky story?

Gnat invasion forces folks into swat team

By Gayle Worland and Grace Aduroja, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Dan McGrath contributed to this report

August 3, 2003

Normally, you can hardly spot them. But Saturday, you couldn't help but swat them.

From the stands at Wrigley Field to the sidewalks of Skokie, a swath of the Chicago area fell under siege Saturday from swarms of itty-bitty gnats hovering over heads, buzzing into beards and navigating into nostrils.

"The air looks like dots, dots, dots, because they are really small," said 8-year-old Nia Gray, bravely sucking on a pink lollipop as she and her mother visited the bug-blighted Rogers Park Jazz Series festival on North Sheridan Road. "It was very nasty, very creepy. People were swatting and swatting."

Rob Kleiman had swung into the parking lot of the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie with his wife and three children around 5 p.m. when they got more than they bargained for: gnats galore.

"We're talking billions and billions of these things," Kleiman said.

The good news is that gnats don't bite or carry disease and therefore don't pose a health hazard, said Tim Hadac, spokesman for the Chicago Health Department. "The bad news is that they're an extreme annoyance for people."

That was particularly true for fans at Saturday's Cubs game, where the third-largest crowd of the season saw more swats than bats in packed Wrigley Field. Players draped towels over their heads and shooed bugs from their jerseys.

Steve Lyons, broadcasting for Fox Sports, resorted to pulling his suit jacket over his head, and the Cubs' Moises Alou had to delay an at-bat when a gnat flew into his eye. By the 6th and 7th innings, hundreds of fans down the right-field line had abandoned their seats for the concourse.

Paul Rathje, director of stadium operations, promised to "do some fogging" Sunday morning before the next game.

Not everybody hates gnats. Birds, spiders and bats love them, said Philip Parrillo, collection manager in the Field Museum's insect division.

Parrillo started getting calls late last week about clouds of bugs along the lakefront. He suspects they're various species of gnats and midges, members of the fly family chironomidae, which start their life cycle as larvae in water.

"There's a tremendous flush of them this season," he said.

Although many speculated that the relatively cool, wet summer weather might be to blame, Parrillo said he couldn't be sure. Gnats generally hold their biggest "swarmfests" in the spring and fall, he said, when they are frantically dating, and mating, in midflight.

The bugs probably will stay near the lakefront, Parrillo said. "They're generally not long-distance fliers," he noted.

The females will return to the water to lay their eggs, and the adults will die within a few days, Parrillo said. But since new groups of gnats might emerge, one can't assume the midge mayhem is over.

"I grew up in Georgia," said Rogers Park resident Chris Adams, "and we had gnats all the time, but I can't remember it being this bad."

Adams and his wife, Tina-Marie, picked up their bikes at an Evanston bike shop Saturday afternoon, then rode home through the swarms.

"Kids were walking down the sidewalks with [paper] bags over their heads like the Unknown Comic," he said. "When we came back, we had to take a shower, because there were gnats in the hair on my arms, on my head, in my beard."

Operators at the Chicago 311 center were all abuzz with gnat reports streaming in from the North Side--some 250 to 300 calls in one day, said Ted O'Keefe of 311 City Services.

"Mosquitoes seem to get all the attention in the media because they carry disease," Hadac said. "Today, it's the gnats' turn."

Glad I went to Wicker Park/Bucktown last night ;)