MACHIAS – Despite an unfortunate incident at the Canadian border, the fourth annual convention of the Maine Blackfly Breeders Association, held Friday, was a riotous affair.

MBBA is devoted to protecting the Maine black fly, and board member Holly Garner-Jackson said the organization now boasts 422 members from the United States and Canada.

Her announcement was greeted with proud applause from the 48 people who gathered at the Blue Bird Family Ranch Restaurant for the group’s annual breakfast meeting.

There were, however, some sober moments.

Leigh Waldron and Art White of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, were unable to show their fellow delegates a new hatch of black flies from the eggs they took home from last year’s convention.

“They confiscated them at the border this morning,” reported an obviously shaken Waldron.

Waldron and White are trying to introduce black flies to St. Stephen, and Jim Wells, an MBBA board member, sympathized with security restrictions that dashed the hopes of the Canadian pioneers.

“It’s a changed world,” Wells said sadly

With black fly hatcheries in Jonesboro and Whiting, MBBA has no problem coming up with the eggs to assure healthy populations of the little bloodsuckers, but they are having a problem finding someone to work at the facilities.

The group has been advertising in local weekly newspapers for a hatchery manager with a “preferably valid” driver’s license, but there has been a dearth of applicants, Wells said.

Despite the setbacks, the mood of the delegates was anything but black as they launched into the limerick contest.

With the exception of black fly researcher David “Jose” Clifford, most of the black fly aficionados dropped a limerick into the contest basket as they entered the restaurant.

Clifford, who said he misread the annual meeting announcement, apologized for contributing a lime rock.

Clifford’s wife, Cecile, redeemed him when she introduced the black fly invention of the year- a pair of “blackflynoculars.”

The glasses bear a drawing of a black fly on the lenses and are for people who, “through no fault of their own” are unable to be in Maine for black fly season, Cecile Clifford said.

The limerick contest obviously was rigged – a fact that board member Marilyn Dowling acknowledged without apology and Wells attributed to the group’s hiring of “some Olympic skating judges.”

The applause was overwhelming for a refrain submitted by Alan Brooks of Whiting, who rhymed “Mother Superior” and “posterior.”

Brooks also is the author of MBBA catch phrases such as “Born to Swarm” and “We Breed ‘Em, You Feed ‘Em.” His prize was a quarters collection board painted with a grossly distorted map of the United States comprising Down East, The County, To the Westward and Away.

MBBA is gaining national attention and was featured this summer on TV’s “CBS Sunday Morning” during a segment of Tim Sample’s “Postcards from Maine.” The organization was created by Peter Clarkson Crolius of Marshfield, who included his position as “chairman emeritus” in the obituary he wrote shortly before he died in 1994.

Membership grows by the year, aided in large part by Jim Ebbit of Milbridge, who was honored Friday for recruiting 67 new members. Ebbit said he and his wife, Kathy, convinced friends and family members – including those who live in Hawaii and California – to take advantage of the $1 lifetime membership.

In addition to having a very good time, MBBA members also raise money for local organizations through the sale of a growing array of black fly housing and recreational facilities and black fly memorabilia, such as Swarm Domes and bumper stickers.