Maine Blackfly Breeders Association: ‘We breed ’em, You feed ’em’
Their wit? Biting.

Eleven years after it was founded, people still get confused. The Maine Blackfly Breeders Association is, after all, a real group. But it’s not really a real group.

Which is why members about fell on the floor when they got the letter.

An Arizona lab wrote asking to buy batches of their black flies for research.

“We were dying. We typed up a letter that was completely absurd to send back to them,” said Marilyn Dowling.

Sure, for $50 an hour they would gather black flies, they told the lab. For $150 an hour they would sex them. The group figured the lab would get the hint at the astronomical fee and the intricate and completely invented description of how to tell boy and girl black flies apart.

Instead, the lab said, “Great.”

Their bluff called, Dowling and others found themselves asking friends if they could paw through bodies in their bug traps.

“We had a hard time getting people to believe we needed them,” she said.

The lab came back the next year for more. They scrounged up some more. A third request never came. It still makes Dowling laugh.

Started as a lark, the Maine Blackfly Breeders Association has an annual convention. A popular line of T-shirts and bumper stickers. An 8-foot mechanical mascot. Occasionally mistaken for the real thing – a group of people who actually raise black flies – it gives about $6,000 to charities in Washington County each year.

“It’s just humor that spread,” said Holly Garner-Jackson, whose Machias art gallery serves as MBBA headquarters.

If they can spread a little love, or at least begrudging respect for the buggers, all the better. One edict that comes with a $1 lifetime MBBA membership: no more swatting.

“I don’t usually put anything on (come black fly season,)” said Garner-Jackson. “Marilyn actually rolls up her sleeves and goes, ‘Come on, little darlings.'”

Well, that sucks

The group started as pure fiction with publisher Peter Crolius printing anonymous write-ups in the local newspaper about MBBA’s going-ons. When he died, Dowling, who did illustration work for Crolius, and Garner-Jackson promised Crolius’ family they would carry on the MBBA legacy.

Dowling designed logos and artwork. A retired psychologist, Jim Wells, moved to town, asked to join and began making black fly houses. The group was officially off.

Laurel Robinson rounds out the group’s all-volunteer leadership.

The 11th annual convention at the end of February, a morning of food, limericks and costumed competition, drew 116 people. Someone is bestowed the “Breeder of the Year” title and, in the past, the group has also offered up a presidential candidate. (“The Blackfly party is the only political party with both a right and left wing,” says Garner-Jackson.)

“You figure they have a lot of cabin fever. They’ll go to anything,” Dowling said.

There was, however, a cloud over this winter’s convention: Organizers announced, to great outcry, that it was intended to be the last. Right now, it’s at something like “we’ll see” status. What’s certain: another float in the Machias Fourth of July parade.

“We try to get as many people to come and be black flies,” Garner-Jackson said. “They wear black. We give them a set of wings and some red stickers and a kazoo. So they run through the crowd playing their kazoo and then they put red stickers on people (pretending to bite them).”

A first-place parade win in 2000 and its $1,000 prize kicked off the association’s charitable bent. Members split the money among an animal shelter, hospice, food pantry and Big Brothers Big Sisters. Since then, mostly from merchandise proceeds, it’s given away thousands, Garner-Jackson said.

‘Why in the world … ?’

In June, Dowling will join the Maine Blackfly Breeders team in the 2009 Trek Across Maine. (Bugs, she says, need clean air, too.) The Jonesboro artist designed T-shirts and accessories for the bikers.

“We’re the only ones with giant black flies riding on our helmets,” she said. “We get comments like, ‘There’s a bug on your head.’ Then we’ll tell them that it’s black flies and they shudder.”

She’s a little defensive.

There’s a whole lot to like about the black fly, Dowling said:

They’re indicative of clean water. They’re bird and fish food.

They help pollinate blueberries.

And, not to be overlooked: “They help keep the people population down,” she said. “We don’t want it to get too crowded.”

So far, 1,300 people have become lifetime members with a calligraphied certificate. Misunderstandings about what the groups does, or doesn’t do, cut two ways. Some people, Garner-Jackson said, are furious, as in, “‘Why in the world would anybody breed black flies?’ – especially the people who have horrible reactions to them.”

Others are simply perplexed.

Dowling said her father was visiting his parents’ graves one day in a cemetery notorious for springtime swarms when he ran into two men working. Talk quickly turned to bugs.

“One of them said, ‘There’s a group around here that’s actually breeding them,'” she said. “My father was too embarrassed to admit it was his daughter” – or to set them straight.

Next Friday

Need more weird in your life? Join us at sunjournal.com next Friday at noon for a live chat with cryptozoologist Loren Coleman. Get those crypto questions ready!

Have Fourth of July plans?

The MBBA is looking for would-be bugs to join their parade float in Machias on the evening of the Fourth. Black clothing needed. Wings and kazoos supplied.

FMI: Maineblackfly.org