21 hours ago
Can putting a giant dragonfly on your head repel bugs?
If you can't beat 'em, wear 'em.
Aside from the energy-sapping heat of summer in Japan, the season also brings with it swarms of insects. There's nothing worse than sweating buckets outside, only to hear that ultra-high-pitched whir of a mosquito graze your ear. Blindly waving your hands and hurling epithets at it is useless because there's only one language bugs understand: eat or be eaten.
That's why our writer Udonko invested in Oniyanma-kun, a plastic figure of an oniyanma dragonfly. 'Yanma' is the Japanese word for larger types of dragonfly and an 'oni' is a type of mythical demon that's similar to an ogre, but the word is often used figuratively to mean something like 'mother of all' in a superlative sense. So, 'oniyanma' can literally translate to 'the mother of all dragonflies' and is also known as the 'jumbo dragonfly' in English. Needless to say, they can be pretty big — up to 10 centimeters (4 inches) in fact — and they get that way by being a voracious devourer of other insects.
Udonko figured that such a notorious predator in the insect world stood a good chance of keeping bugs off her and her beloved dog, so she ordered one online for 964 yen plus 460 yen for shipping and paid a total of 1,424 yen (US$10).
Oniyanma-kun is about the size of a real oniyanma, which is to say really big, and it has a safety pin on the mouth so you can attach it to clothing or bags.
According to the package, it's most effective when placed somewhere that other insects can easily see it, like on a hat or backpack.
The package also said it would work for dogs as well, so she decided to pin Oniyanma-kun to her pet's harness and go for a walk in an area where bugs are known to be. This way she could clearly monitor how well it worked.
She repeated this for about two weeks to get a good sense of Oniyanma-kun's effectiveness and came to the conclusion that it kind of worked sometimes. She could clearly see that wasps and mosquitoes that would normally beeline it for her dog veered away when Oniyanma-kun was spotted.
However, really small bugs like gnats did not seem deterred by the plastic dragonfly. Perhaps they lacked the ability to detect it well, but either way, that was acceptable since it was more the wasps and mosquitos that Udonko was worried about.
Another problem was that when a mosquito was out of the line of sight with Oniyanma-kun it didn't hesitate to bite into her prized pooch, either because it was smart enough to get out of the dragonfly's field of view or because it was stupid enough to not even remember the beast was there once it was out of sight.
One really good point about Oniyanma-kun was that it worked across a range of insect species, whereas bug repellants often only target certain ones. Although it definitely had its limitations, there was a certain degree of effectiveness and if used in the right way or in combination with other methods, it could be a useful tool.
It also gave Udonko an added sense of confidence. When a wasp approached her, she would say, 'Are you sure about that? I got an oniyanma here,' and she could stay calm until it flew away. All in all, the positives outweighed the negatives and it was well worth the purchase both for her and her dog.
Related: Amazon Japan/Oniyanma-kun
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[ Read in Japanese ]
