From: Philip St. George, thenorthbaybay.ca staff
Dawn and Steve Christon just installed a new gazebo on their back deck and were enjoying the sunshine when terror struck.
“I was sipping one of those new spicy bean Caesars when I spotted it,” recounts Dawn. “It landed right on Steve’s neck – a pine beetle.”
The pine beetle, also known as a spruce sawyer or a white-spotted sawyer, is a medium-sized insect native to northern Ontario. Typically measuring 2 to 3 cm in length, pine beetles come out in late May and early June.
“Yeah, I was terrified,” says Steve. “I know they bite, and they bite HARD. So I panicked and told Dawn to contact the police.”
The O.P.P. failed to respond to the call.
“I don’t know what I’m even paying taxes for,” mumbles Dawn. “What’s the point of cops if they don’t respond to every single call they get?”
Once dislodged, the pine beetle crawled across the Christon’s deck for a few minutes before flying around them and “causing unparalleled horror” says Dawn.
“After a while though, we realized that he wasn’t really interested in us and just sort of got used to him,” explains Steve. “So we named him and now he’s just kind of a guest here at the gazebo.”
Dawn and Steve named the spruce sawyer Gary.
“In hindsight, calling the police was pretty drastic,” says Steve. “The cops have actual crimes to investigate – like robberies, and running a fake news site.”