Folly Beach in South Carolina is the worst for no-see-ems. In fact, my brother coined the term "going monkey" down there while we were breaking down my Hobie 18 at 5am after about 2 hours of sleep one morning (that's a LONG story). As we're trying to get the boat broken down with the assistance of Chilli (an honest* homeless guy we accidently awoke from a peacefull snooze under "his" Hobie 16). The nats were really descending on us and kept getting thicker and thicker by the second. While rushing to get the mast down my brother said something about getting to see what "going monkey" is all about - but I was too preocupied and pissed at the world (because of the nats, the lack of sleep, a hangover, and having salt and sand in every sweaty crevice of my body) to ask what he meant. About 5 minutes later, we both had peaked our threshold for dealing with the no-see-ems and were running down the street waving our hands over our heads and jumping in the air in an attempt to escape the enslaught of miniscule bugs that must have teeth 10 times the size of their bodies. Immediately I realized what he meant by "going monkey".

As far as the love bugs, my parents house, on top of a high peak all by themselves in TN, was completely inundated with them two years ago...most outside walls were completely blanketed. They come back every year - but have never been as bad. They get in every nook and cranny in the house and we still find them everywhere. Word of advise...they stink when they're dead.

*Chilli, who did genuinely pitch in, later asked for a couple of bucks to buy some beer when the store opened. I never had a homeless guy ask me for anything other than food money and was so impressed that not only was he actually helping without any promise of a return, he actually was truthfull with what he wanted to buy. I gave him a $20...then again, maybe it was the fact that we were done with the boat and escape from the nats was near.