Flies, rumors plague Wisconsin's Northwoods
"For lack of a better word," Eagle River Mayor Jeff Hyslop said, "I guess I'd call it a plague."
Locals say they have never seen so many of the flies that scientists call Sarcophaga aldrichi, and rumors are flying about what has caused the relentless invasion.
Whether at a gas station, grocery, bar or restaurant, it's hard not to hear someone blame the flies on the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
"Everybody's talking about it: 'Oh, the DNR introduced the flies,' " says Rich Behrens, owner of Smuggler's Lounge restaurant and bar in Eagle River. "Rumors fly wild up here when there's nothing better to do."
As the story goes, the DNR introduced the fly in order to counteract forest tent caterpillars, a ravenous insect currently defoliating millions of acres across northern Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula Michigan, Minnesota and Canada.
Some even call them "government flies."
Pure nonsense, say DNR officials. They attribute the widespread, stubborn rumor to a dim understanding of naturally recurring events, a general distrust of government and distaste for the wildlife agency in particular.
It is the DNR, after all, that dictates what people may hunt and when, charges fees for fishing, tickets boaters for failing to carry enough life preservers and tells lakeside homeowners how long their docks may be.
"People like to blame us for things, whether it's valid or not," said Tim Mulhern, a DNR forestry supervisor.
Andrea Diss, a Wisconsin DNR entomologist, said she's been buttonholed by people who swear they've seen black DNR vans pull up to forest's edge, swing open their doors and release flies.
Lately, she said, "we graduated to having black helicopters" releasing clouds of insects.
"No kidding," she says. "I don't know why people get these ideas because, for heaven's sake, (the flies have) gone into outbreak every 10 years for centuries.
"Thousands of years, millions of years, they've been doing this. Don't people remember this? It's one of those big events in nature."
Forest tent caterpillars normally exist in small numbers but explode in population every six to 16 years depending on weather and forest conditions. The aspen, oak and birch trees favored by the caterpillars usually survive, even when stripped of leaves for a season or more.
Their huge numbers trigger a corresponding increase in their natural enemy, flies twice the size of a housefly that feed on the caterpillars' cocoons. That, combined with the eventual depletion of the food supply after two or three years, causes most of the caterpillars to die off.
Both caterpillars and flies are native species that need no interference from humans, DNR officials say. Though they don't bite, the flies appear in the heat of the day to bask in the sun and alight on boats, cars, beach towels and people.
Sue Teik, manager of Skipper's Harbor Restaurant in Eagle River, has heard nothing but complaints lately. In April, Teik relocated here from Milwaukee. The flies have caused her to second-guess the move.
"They're pestiferous," Teik says. She shoots a sideward glance to puzzled faces. "We looked it up. It's a word."
Asked how the flies were treating him, telephone-line worker Victor Bellomy, 42, responds without prompting: "Oh yeah. Thank you, Mr. DNR."
He proceeds with a common variation on the DNR conspiracy theme. The caterpillars first were introduced to kill a glut of ladybugs (never mind that caterpillars are vegetarians). Then the flies were introduced to control the caterpillars.
"To get that many flies," Bellomy says, his voice lowering, "somebody had to do something. You don't just flat get a billion of them.
"We're thinking the next thing they're going to drop is mosquitoes."
Where does this information come from? "Just talk from people," he says. "As far as me knowing a plane went through and dropped them? This I don't know."
Steve Meyer, a clerk at Guide's Choice Pro Shop in Eagle River, has heard his fill of DNR stories and dismisses them as "baloney." Still, he knows better than to think he can disabuse some people of the story.
"I had a customer start arguing with me that the DNR planted them," he said, recalling the customer's outrage with the government's misguided attempt to "interfere with nature."
"I told him, 'Hey, I'm not going to argue with you,' " he says. "But the fact is, it is nature."
Meyer rings up an order of jumbo leeches. "I know people don't trust the government," he says, "But, c'mon!"