By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

Forget curling, I've got the perfect new Olympic sport: miller moth marauding.

But time's a wasting if you've got a hankering to participate.

Soon, (or at least I'm hoping) these pesky moths will clear out of the area for cooler climes to the west, as in the Rocky Mountains.

Although I'm sure everyone in the northwest Kansas has seen and perhaps cussed these critters at one time or another, they seem particularly bad this year. For the technical minded, millers are the adult form of the army cutworm, which migrate to Colorado each year to sip on nectar as they lounge around waiting for the return trip back east to lay eggs.

Along the way, they are easily sidetracked -- drawn to the light of, well, anything in their way. The slightest crack is all that's needed to seek entry.

I know at my country home, they're terrible. I mean truly terrible. As in they are everywhere. On the ceiling, on the wall, behind every picture frame, on the floor, on the computer. Sometimes even on my head. One is even in the globe surrounding the light bulb on the ceiling, a globe fastened by three screws.

I declared war on them when I walked into my well-lighted kitchen and was assaulted on the scene.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of the flittering, foul-tasting bugs swirled about.

At first, it was fun, as I stood there swatting away with my trusty wire-handled fly swatter.

Thwack, thwack, thwack the melody went. My arm soon tired, and the floor at the north end of the kitchen was littered with moths.

The final straw came when I made one last swat, smacking not only a moth but also the pull chain that hangs down from my ceiling fan, which of course was running at high speed to stir up the millers.

That chain went up, into the fan and promptly broke, throwing the decorative piece up against the wall and down on the counter. Yes, it missed the window by scant inches.

So it was time for another tactic.

That was my handy shop vacuum, with it's heavy duty suction.

Cleaning up my mess, I then proceeded to aim for flying targets.

I then found the ideal spot, next to a floor lamp.

The game was on, as I parried and thrust and other fencing terms, save for the fact I was using a vacuum nozzle.

I so hoped that I had decimated the crowd, and finally went to bed, bothered by the few that remained.

But morning dawned with spots everywhere. Hundreds of them.

On and one this game has gone, to the point now where I can capture them in mid-flight. Two and three in a single shot.

I'd like to think I've again trimmed them down. But I still open the door in the morning, reminding my pets to go toward the light.

Perhaps they'll forget from whence they came.