Bite Me Not freedom stripes.
There is good fly news for hikers, especially felons.
You know how it is when they wake you from a sound sleep and say it's time for you to go? And then they turn you loose in that striped shirt and matching pants? And then everybody points at you? Hey.
Embarrassing.
But pretty soon now you can scram out of the city, take to the trails, and fit right in. Because the smart backpackers will all be dressed like you, in black and white stripes.
Sure, it's still not great. You go from living in a cage to living like a stray cat, but stray cats get to run around, and they don't get questioned about what they're up to every place they go, or have to endure any of that rude pointing.
But there has been another long-standing problem for backpackers. Flies.
Flies?
Right. Flies.
You didn't see all that many in jail, but if you start living on the trail you find out pretty quick what hell is. Oh, boy. Flies.
All over.
In your hair, in your eyes, in your food, up your nose, your pants, your shirt. Everywhere. But not if you're dressed right. Not any more.
Because ClegWear, the first name in prison garb, is branching out to hiking clothes.
Why not those cute little white tennis dresses or something?
Because.
Because ClegWear figures that if they can sell to trail rats they have it made. Because ClegWear has a secret weapon for backpacking clothing. Stripes. Which they're already really good at.
And they call this new stuff Fly-B-Gone Hike Wear™.
Hikers are known for dirt, dust, sweat, body odor, hair grease, food stains, hanging boogers, and persistent slovenliness, all of which make them just about irresistible to any and all flying things with biting parts.
But ClegWear's purely scientific research using painted wooden decoy horses and expendable test hamsters has resulted in a unique collection of zebra-stripe clothing. Which is neat because (get this) stripes turn out to be naturally disorienting, and crosseyed flies don't bite.
Flies like adirondack black flies, anthomyiid flies, balloon flies, bat flies, black flies, blow flies, bot flies, breeze flies, buffalo gnats, clags, common gnats, crane flies, dark-winged fungus gnats, deer flies, dung flies, elephant flies, eye gnats, flesh flies, frit flies, fruit flies, fungus gnats, gadflies, gall midges, glegs, hair flies, hessian flies, horn flies, horse flies, house flies, hover flies, humpbacked flies, long-legged flies, louse flies, march flies, marsh flies, midges, moose-flies, mosquitoes, moth flies, no-see-ums, phantom midges, picture-winged flies, robber flies, rust flies, sand flies, shore flies, skippers, snipe flies, soldier flies, stable flies, stalk-eyed flies, stiletto flies, tachinid flies, thick-headed flies, tsetse flies, turkey gnats, vinegar flies, warble flies, white stockinged black flies, window flies, zimbs, and even punkies, which are probably the worst. Punkies.
When wearing stripes you'll see fewer of the vicious little hairy buggers but will still unfortunately find some in your beer. If you drink outdoors. Which is where you will be if you are backpacking and happen on some trail magic like a full cooler sitting on the trail with a sign saying "Free Beer For Hickers".
What you actually end up swallowing in such a situation is really a mix of beer and flies, like the well-known drosophila melanogaster (fruit beer fly). Plus the swarms of biting flies that followed you and finally caught up and don't like beer at all, just blood.
Sure, the best way to avoid flies in your beer is not to drink any beer, but that's a pretty shabby way to live, and does nothing about all that annoying predation which is slowly removing your hide.
But now, whether recently-freed from a cell with no other clothing options, or deliberately decked out in one of ClegWear's oh-so-affordable Fly-B-Gone™ hiking ensembles, the worst of your fly problems are mostly over.
The bad news is the beer flies. Which will still be happily sliding down your gullet.
And the ones you don't swallow? Once they catch beer smell on your breath they'll spend hours trying to get at it by flying up your nose or crawling between your lips, and, being completely brainless and having no perspective whatsoever they will keep doing this a lot longer than you can be bothered to fight them off. And stripes won't help with that at all.
But it's still better in most ways than being lunch. And you got to have that beer, remember. And you can still wear your cute little white tennis dress in town, where it will actually do some good, if that's the sort of thing you call fun.
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Me? Still losing arguments with the cat. (I wish I had a cat.)