Johnny Depp reading.
From mid-June until mid-July, my neighborhood near Lake St. Clair outside Detroit is covered with what Michiganders call fish flies. They have no stomachs and are completely harmless. They are meant to provide food for the fish in the lake. Except these insects blow inland in alarming numbers. You hear a crunch under your car wheels, storefronts are covered with
them, they turn up in surprising places.They cling to everything including people. They are everywhere for a month--the more the better in terms of lake health.
This year saw a bumper crop. About the size of a skinny moth, they are nearly weightless.
Do you have anything like this in your port of call?
15 comments:
For a person of murderous intent but socially acceptable ideology, driving down Harper through St. Clair Shores certainly satisfies.
Oh the Crunch!
Midges!!!!! The dreaded midges. Don't open your mouth or you will eat one. Don't open your car door, or you will ride with one. Not so bad here, but along the Lake....
With no stomachs, it's no wonder they are only around a month.
Sand flies by the millions flock to the Niagara River during these hot summer nights. Unwary drivers find their windshields smeared with bug bodies.
I don't even think they have mouths. Just barely alive fish food. Ha! WM-I remember a guest visiting thought it was peanut shells at night.
They are better than the nearby black fly invastion. Midges are new to me. Sand flies bite. I remember that.
Midges bite, too. Nasty things. In terms of climbing on one, aside from the mosquitoes and the slow horseflies (the worst insects in the temperate zones, and an example of which Obama so famously killed recently, not that that is really that much of a trick), the cicadas are the most oblivious while lighting on one in the Mid-Atlantic. Certainly, when I was painting my folks' house some twenty-plus years ago (wow...listened to the Pacifica Radio coverage of the Iran-Contra hearings while I did so), they sure liked to light on my ancient doubleknits that were my painting pants. Never more than two at a time. Or that's all I would allow, anyway.
Todd-you can even make this sound lovely.
Down here we have love bugs, little black bugs that are almost always mated when you see them. They get into everything. the first time Lana saw them she was shocked and a little frightened at their sheer numbers.
BTW, I won't be doing a Forgotten books this coming Friday.
Thanks, Charles. What does it mean they are mated when you see them? Are the relevant organs engaged?
I remember May Flies in Iowa growing up. They came off the Mississippi river and invaded for about 3 weeks and then vanished.
The closest thing we have in L.A. is the annual invasion of hopefuls who descend in early sumer for pilot season. The air wreaks of desperation and false confidence as every one who ever starred in a local dinner theater production of Our Town tries their hand at being a big star. Much like the insects that crunch underfoot in the midwest you can't swing a dead cat around Los Angeles without hitting a few deluded wannabes who stalk the streets floating on a air of entitlement only to swim home on a wave of shame and disappointment back to their ordinary lives of non-televised solitude.
Oh how I wish I could crush them under the tires of my car. Consider me jealous of the sweet satisfaction you all must feel.
Wow-nice jump, Eric. I hadn't equated them with human visitors that bring the same dread. How about the annual art festival in Ann Arbor--the whole city clears out to give the tourists sway.
Patti, how many (what percentage) of your compatriots took out for the Shore and Pconos in the summer when your were still resident in the Cradle of Democracy?
As I recall love bugs, you can barely see them unless two are locked in their mating ritual.
Pilot season folks materialize from the air, trying to get on the air...the air wreaks their desperation and false confidence upon the city...
I spent a month in the Poconos (church camp) and two weeks in Ocean City, NJ as a Philly kid. Both were buggy. The midwest in general is not as buggy--not as humid or hot. We have no lightening bugs either.
A lack of fireflies is sad thing, indeed.
(For Juri's collection: Word Verification: shisting)
Midges and black flies are horrid in the Boreal Forest.
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