"Yes, you can light Greek coffee (grounds) on fire like this. It's very weird that it lights on fire because Greek coffee is the healthiest in the world for you," our waiter told us the other day at lunch. He was doing what so many waiters are doing right now – lighting pots or buckets of coffee grounds to create a not-unpleasant billowing smoke that drives away the yellow jackets that have appeared throughout the island. We'll leave aside his curious claim to the health benefits of Greek coffee.
The yellow jackets first became noticeable about three weeks ago and mostly in particular places – the west-facing Chokolakas beach where our gyros and watermelon sunset picnic drew their attention. Then Emily and I – to our great surprise – found the high-end Kyma seafood restaurant on little-accessed Aspri beach was teeming with them when we arrived. Being a rare customer service oriented restaurant, Kyma had metal pails of coffee grounds ready to fire up around sunset time and was ready to defend phobic Emily at the first sign of discomfort.
In the two weeks since, we've begun encountering yellow jackets almost everywhere. Sometimes just a few here and there, sometimes in large numbers and especially where there's seafood, meat or fruit around.
While in America, a restaurant or cafe with a yellow jacket problem would be scrambling to buy products and get an exterminator post haste, Greeks don't seem to pay them much heed and seem as cooly indifferent to them as house flies. We've seen people swat them away and even catch and kill them with their bare hands (always as a courtesy to Emily) – behavior that at home might count as being a danger to yourself or others. The first time a Greek waiter swatted at a yellow jacket, we all ducked like it was an air raid – doing that must turn them into angry stinging machines.
But no – the yellow jacket just went elsewhere, carrying on with its scavenging mission. And the Greek waitstaff look at us (and by that I mostly mean Emily) as the ones fit for involuntary admission. "Why would anyone be afraid of yellow jackets?" their looks seem to say. And unless I'm really missing something, no one has pulled out the Raid, Black Flag or any other kind of insect killing products to curb the wasp population.
In June and early July, we were getting bug bites – especially Emily and Sennen. They seemed like mosquito bites at first, only we never saw any mosquitos. For awhile, there was concern we might have bedbugs since we would wake up with more – but I researched bedbug bites and they didn't match the shape, color or pattern. Then I was sitting at a cafe in the town square when I felt sharp bites around my ankles – but saw only flies. A little research and I discovered that Greece has biting sandflies (which were actually references in Sennen's Greek Mythology book as Hera sent sandflies after Io to bite and torture her for having an affair with Zeus) – and their bites resemble mosquitos. Moreover, the bumps sometimes take awhile to show.
Flies seemed to be fairly ubiquitous during those weeks which was initially more of an annoyance than a concern for us since "harmless as a fly" is a phrase we grow up with. But these flies were not harmless. Yet, locals didn't seem to care and there wasn't even the equivalent of the burning Greek coffee to reduce our annoyance.
I wondered for awhile how we missed these pests in our previous visits. Were we unaware? Had Patmos changed? Is it global warming? Was June different than September when we visited previously? What was going wrong with our paradise?
About three weeks ago, the bug bites all but stopped. Emily, who took to carrying Caladryl around, had virtually no bites after we returned from Kusadasi. It turns out the yellow jackets she viscerally fears are also her saviors – they eat a lot of pesky insects. To my mind, if we have to choose, at least there's a ubiquitous and non-toxic repellent for the new pest that restaurants everywhere recognize. Still, I don't think they see the yellow jackets are problematic due to their potential to sting – it seems almost a foregone conclusion they are harmless – but want to drive them away because of their aggressive efforts to share patron's dinners, particularly meats and seafood. Also, when yellow jackets determine you don't have any of their favorite foods, they tend to move on.
The whole thing at least answered my questions and quelled my self-doubt. It turns out, the yellow jackets have a seasonal cycle that declines by the end of August – explaining why we haven't seen them before. It turns out that in Patmos there is a season for every purpose under heaven – a time to swim, a time to dry off, a time for late lunch, a time for late dinner, a time for wine, a time for ouzo, a time to arrive, a time to depart, a time for sandflies, a time for yellow jackets, a time to burn Greek coffee and a time to come later in the season after its all over.
