With the coming of autumn, flies and flying things of all sorts become more persistent and aggressive. Bush dwellers, particularly, are annoyed in this season by the furtive March fly, of the silent attack and the serrated sting.

Now comes the time when we douse flies
   With various kinds of sprays --
The sand flies, and the house flies,
   And the flies with furtive ways.
But I keep my hate for the large flies
   That come for the tree-lined creek --
Those arch flies, the March flies
   With a crosscut saw for a beak.

Now, most flies rouse in the autumn
   From the summer's drowsy daze,
And they bite as nature taught 'em,
   In various styles and ways.
They nip, or they stab or they burrow;
   But the fly that knocks me out
Is the March fly, with the dull, dead eye
   And a crosscut saw for a snout.

Now the house flies come to the table
   Or busily play on the pane;
And our rage and heat they calmly treat
   With the uttermost disdain.
And the buzz-flies buzz and blunder,
   And the sandflies dig right in;
But my whole soul shrinks when the March fly sinks
   His crosscut under my skin.

He's a sneak and an arrant coward,
   And the lowest of low-down cows,
By nature ghoulishly dowered
   With a weapon no law allows.
And it isn't the pain he gives me
   Nor the blood he may chance to draw,
It's the loathsome way that he makes foul play
   With his really terrible,
   Most unbearable,
   Horrible crosscut saw. 

"Den"
Herald, 21 March 1935, p6