Ten years from now what smell will most remind you of the coronavirus lockdown? I know what it'll be for me: Amber Romance. Why, you might ask, would a cheap Victoria's Secret fragrance with all the olfactory sophistication of a fourteen-year-old headed for the mall, conjure memories of an international viral emergency? If you live anywhere near the Mississippi River you probably already know the reason: the buffalo gnats have been biblical this spring!
Buffalo gnats, or black flies, are vile, biting little creatures which seem particularly awful along the Mississippi during high water years. Cruelly in a place where the spring weather is gorgeous but fleeting, there's something about the combination of cool nights and clear, windless days that brings them out in force, to descend in clouds to bite the back of your neck and crawl into your ears the moment you step outside. They torment people and livestock, and will even kill chickens by clogging up their nasal passages and suffocating them. Normal insect repellents like Off and Cutter don't seem to bother them at all. The only good thing you can say about buffalo gnats is that they disappear when the weather gets hot—something most of us who live in Louisiana don't usually look forward to. Until then, if you want to be outside, your only choices are to invest in a beekeeper's suit or hose yourself down with—you guessed it—Amber Romance.
It’s long been known that smells trigger strong memories—ones suffused with emotional associations and vivid images of times gone by. Apparently this is to do with the fact that our olfactory bulb is closely wired to the parts of our brain that process emotion and associative learning. I have a mediocre sense of smell at best but believe me, that's all you'll need for the fumes of Amber Romance to bring memories of adolescent heartbreak flooding back. Subtle it is not and therein lies its appeal. I can't remember where we learned this trick but it works wonders. One whiff and the gnats vanish like a cheap hotel room during spring break. So this weekend, if you're in the Felicianas and pass by a middle-aged man smelling vaguely like a lovesick teenager, don't think worse of him. It's probably me.
