Gnats

Tiny and generally harmless flies, commonly seen swarming into large clouds. Midges are often categorised as a kind of gnat, and these were found in enormous numbers in the marshlands of Middle-earth. They were so numerous in the wetlands eastward of Bree that those marshes became known as 'Midgewater'. We have fewer direct references to gnats by name, but they were sufficiently common to be spoken of in a proverbial sense. When Frodo and Sam found themselves trapped in Shelob's Lair on the borders of Mordor, Sam summed up their situation as 'gnats in a net'.¹