Saturday, June 26, 2010

Mayflies

A spontaneous suggestion put us on the road early this morning heading east to the boat for breakfast.  Gamblers we are not, so after filling our tummies we mozied our way over to a Walmart.  Bought a new flag for the Fourth of July.  Stopped at three garage sales and, heaven help me, I added more fabric to my stack for weaving rugs.  Now we're back home in the air-conditioning.  It's hotter than we all know what.

We stopped at a convenience store in one of the small river towns, and the sidewalks were covered with dead mayflies (also called june bugs and fishflies).  They're attracted to light, and man do they leave a mess for the workers to clean up.

This spring a mayfly hatch along the Mississippi River was actually so massive that it was picked up by the National Weather Service's Doppler Radar.  The squishy, stinky dead bodies of mayflies cause real messes for towns near bodies of water.  It's not uncommon for towns to use snowplows to clear roads of inches-deep dead mayflies.  Driving a car over them is no pleasant thing either cuz you can hear and almost feel them crunching under the tires.

Now, I'm surely no insectologist, but as I understand, a mayfly spends up to four years as larvae in a body of water, then emerges as an adult that won't ever eat, lives for 2 to 72 hours, mates once, and then dies.  Help me out here...... what's the point?