Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/01/yikes-a-massive-swarm-of-mayf.html
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This is what happens when you don’t maintain a healthy population of frogs and bats.
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If they turned the lights off, the bugs might bug off.
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Good thing they improved… mayflies… with mayfly music?
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Live fast: die young. It is the Mayfly Way.
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That’s cute. Come to Southeast Michigan during fishfly season (which is just the colloquial term for mayflies).
They make the roads slippery with their guts!
Edited to add: Just clicked the link. It is about southeast Michigan. Vindication!
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“Welcome to Pump-N-Munch how can I help you?”
“Yeah, I’d like $30 on pump number four and a big can of RAID please.”
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Man, I don’t like those fuckers. A lot of times on the 4th we would go to the lake and find a spot to land the boat and do fire works or something, and usually there were may flies EVERYWHERE and they were just cool with landing on your bare legs etc. Annoying little buggers!
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I’ve encountered roads covered in them in Michigan, leaving left tire tracks behind me as I drove over them. Lots of crunchy noises. Very surreal.
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Kill it with fire! Wait, wait, not fire, NOT FIRE!
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swarm “covers”
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Bio-drone swarm.
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Poor fellas don’t even have mouths. Its grow up, mate and die. That’s it
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Yeah…
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Never encountered mayflies like that, but a few years back me and some friends were camping along the Pony Express Trail out in they Utah west desert and our camp was invaded by swarms of Mormon Crickets. There were so many the ground turned into a reddish brown moving, undulating mass. It was scary because they’re frightening looking with huge mandibles and they’re not afraid of humans. They will bite. The ones you kill they cannibalize. They’re voracious and single-minded and they just keep moving along. Utah Dept. of Agriculture and Food pretty much wiped them out with a concerted effort that targeted their eggs.
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leave a beautiful exoskeleton
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As long as the station isn’t covered in Junebugs, we’re cool.
also glad it wasn’t Jerusalem Crickets.
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Beautiful seasonal confirmation that there is drinkable water available.
Stay inside, perhaps meditate on the teachings of the Buddha, who would not walk outside in the rainy season to avoid accidentally killing swarming insects. Consider the principle of ahimsa in all its complexity; Patañjali says that it is the intent that matters, the governance of the mind - if one wishes to kill, treats other living things as impediments to oneself instead of as equally deserving of a day in the sun, the wish prevents greater enlightenment, not the action.
They only live one day as adults, they only have this one time to love. To treat them as nuisances to be killed is to succumb to the lure of heartlessness. They are cause for celebration!
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Somebody had the idea to open a DQ (Dairy Queen) in a narrow, heavily wooded/forested valley next to a creek, here in the Appalachian mountains. Every summer night there were hoards of multiple varieties of bugs swarming (like at that gas station) all over the building, totally covering the windows, swarming around the parking lot lights. If you tried to leave the building with your food it would be immediately covered, encased, in bugs. The bugs that flew around the outdoor lights attracted bats. So you had bugs getting in your face, in your hair, in your food, and bats constantly swooping over everybody’s head. They managed to last three summers before going out of business.
Time to break out the big mayflies and a Buff:
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