Last blog, I vented about bugs.

Now there’s a new flying menace on my mind (and face, and glasses, and helmet, and … ): cottonwood “cotton.” With all this cotton flying during my daily commutes, it feels like I’m in a “Porgy and Bess” song.

Anybody who has lived within, say, 10 gazillion miles of a cottonwood tree — at least the female cottonwoods; insert joke at your own peril here — knows what I’m talking about. Every spring, these gals send forth about 14 bazillion seeds attached to cottony structures that allow them to ride the wind before settling to earth and spawning more of the darned things.

At least, that’s the theory.

In reality, the pillowy parachutes of doom simply end up coating air conditioners, filters, lawns and small dogs with their cottony softness.

I remember when I was a kid I used to mow a neighbor’s lawn. She had a cottonwood tree, and the spores would coat me and the mower just about every visit, much to my dad’s dismay (over the mower, mind you). My dad is a big tree guy, more Johnny Appleseed than Paul Bunyan. He loves trees. He can identify ’em by sound. And, yet, he ranted about that woman’s cottonwood like it was pure evil with bark.

Anybody who spends any time at all outside is bound to be attacked by the insidious spores.

I don’t know how many of the things I’ve ingested during my daily commutes. Talk about cottonmouth.

The other day I was riding along and a seed floated by, just as I was inhaling sharply through my nose. Sure enough, it was sucked in like a goose into a jet engine. (Note to self: Stop inhaling sharply through nose).

I went for a run the other day, and one nestled right against the tear duct in my right eye. Yee-ouch that smarted. Of course, it had to happen early in my run, so I had tears streaming down half my face for the bulk of my run.

But I’m a glass-is-half-full kinda guy, so I’ve found a way to deal with the onslaught.

I was riding through a particularly impressive cottonwood storm the other week when I noticed an uncanny resemblance to the streaking of stars when the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive kicked in during the “Star Wars” movies.

So I found myself making like Han Solo, manning the laser and pew-pew-pewing my way through a galaxy far, far away.

But now that I think about it, I fear Solo steered the Falcon. Chewbacca manned the laser turret.

And Chewie, I fear, would be a magnificent cottonwood-cotton magnet. I sure hope he has some decent protective eyewear. And a healthy appetite for spores.