Celebrate blackflies? In Machias, the Maine Blackfly Breeder’s Association (MBBA) started as a joke, grew into a wacky cabin fever reliever centered on an annual convention in February, and morphed into an effective fundraising organization that has distributed several thousand dollars to needy groups in the area.
Blackflies are still hanging around in the Machias area in August, when people in most other Maine communities are focused on swatting mosquitos. “They’re so horrendous here,” says Jonesboro resident Marilyn Dowling, “we have to find a way to laugh about them.”
MBBA members Downeast are quick to point out positive aspects of their extended blackfly season, which often comes as a surprise to tourists. The MBBA website features a cartoon by local artist Bruno Hunt that captures a frequent reaction by tourists, with a reminder that it exemplifies “all the good the little blackfly has done for Maine.” The cartoon shows two tourists swatting at blackflies and running away from some stream-side lots for sale, yelling, “You’d have to be crazy to live in a place like this. We’re going back to Jersey.” And this year, the winner of the annual limerick contest at MBBA’s convention, written by Jerry Metz of Addison, read: “Some breeders from Englishman Bay /Bred a blackfly with new DNA./ It’ll work day and night/You can die from one bite/ But it only likes folks from away.”
The MBBA website, while always a major source of whimsy, also gives solid reasons to put up with the nuisance of blackflies and even encourage them to bite so that females, who are the biters, will obtain the blood they need to thrive and multiply. Blackflies, it explains, are one of the largest pollinators of blueberries, vital to the health of the Downeast economy. “They’re just the right size to fit into the little blueberry blossom,” says Garner-Jackson, who owns the Woodwind Gallery in Machias, home base of MBBA. “They’re also indicators of fresh running water. When you clean up a polluted river, they are one of the first things back.”
The idea for MBBA evolved from whimsical newspaper ads written in the early 1990s by Peter Clarkson Crolius, who praised the merits of a local Downeast Blackfly brew. “It’s a long winter here,” says Dowling, who with Garner-Jackson carried on Crolius’s work after he died. (He noted in his self-written obituary that he was Chairman Emeritus of the Maine Blackfly Breeder’s Association.) “By the end of February everyone has cabin fever and will pretty much do anything for relief.”
MBBA has 674 members who come from all over the United States and Europe. They include two men from New Brunswick who heard about the association and came down to the convention in 2001 to obtain blackfly eggs to take back home since they didn’t have any blackflies in their area. The next year, they showed up again, but when asked about their breeding program, said the eggs had been confiscated at the border.
Many people learn about this odd group while visiting Machias during the summer; others have seen Tim Sample’s Postcard from Maine that featured MBBA. Produced in 2001, it still airs in some airports.
This year, the seventh annual convention, held at A.J.’s Bar and Grill, was attended by 74 people on March 3, despite having to be postponed at the last minute from the regular date because of a snowstorm. The breakfast gathering includes activities like crowning the blackfly queen, the blackfly limerick contest and displays of blackfly houses. The latter have included a Blackfly Bait Shop and Sushi Bar and a Blackfly Beauty Parlor, with signs advertising wing straightening and dying and a couple of blackfly cosmetologists smoking near the back door labeled “Employees Only.”
Conventions, which Garner-Jackson describes as “a couple of hours of pure laughter,” have featured a contest to guess the number of blackflies in a jar (Dowling counted all 4,385) a one-of-a-kind chess set with blackfly pawns, queens, etc. made by Dowling’s nephew; an MBBA song and the Blackfly Olympics with Curling and Men’s and Women’s Hockey.
One of MBBA’s most ambitious projects has been bi-annual participation in the August Machias Wild Blueberry Parade. Dowling, whose phone answering machine informs callers they have reached the “Jonesboro Hatchery of MBBA,” says a good part of MBBA’s popularity in the parade could be attributed to the accompanying blackfly swarm, which is composed of members dressed in black with little wings, using kazoos to create a buzzing noise. “They had little red stickers that they used to put bites on people in the audience,” she says. “It was the first time a float had created that sort of audience interaction.”
When the group began to make money on its T-shirts, holiday cards, blackfly houses, bumper stickers (“We Breed `Em; You Feed `Em,” says one) Christmas ornaments and other blackfly memorabilia — all produced by volunteers and available on the web site — and then won first place for their first entry in the parade, Garner-Jackson says they didn’t know what to do with the money. The MBBA board decided to register as a nonprofit and start giving money away in $200 increments to local organizations like the animal shelter, the food bank, Quoddy Land Trust, Neighbors Helping Neighbors.
This year, a 10-member MBBA team (or swarm) is training for the annual American Lung Association Bike Trek in June. Representatives from the group have also been invited to attend the first Blackfly Festival in Morin Heights, Quebec, in June, part of a celebration of the town’s 150th anniversary, which falls at the height of Blackfly season.
To join MBBA, send $1 for a lifetime membership to MBBA, c/o Woodwind Gallery, 62 Dublin St., Machias, ME 04654. For further information, visit www.maineblackfly.com.