Saturday, June 16, 2007
And then they rise from the lake and cover everything...
I am back, very briefly, in Michigan today. I really picked quite a day to show up, too-- this is the height of the annual fish fly invasion. Every year, about now, Grosse Pointe is literally covered in fragile large-winged bugs about one inch long. They rise out of the lake, blanket everything, then die after one day.
One of my entrenched memories from childhood is riding my bike near the lake and hearing the crunch of their wings under the wheels-- they were impossible to avoid, since they covered the whole sidewalk.
If there is one good thing about fishflies, it is that they don't eat anything. I don't know how that works, exactly-- I suspect that is why they die after one day. In 5th grade I wrote a horror story about the day the fishflies started eating metal.
I'm kind the opposite-- I'm living a long time, and eating a lot.
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Streets lined with bugs, dutch elm disease...come on already Grosse Pointe...let my people go
# posted by 
: 2:26 PM
: 2:26 PM
Around the same time of year, in Fort Madison, Iowa, the Mormon flies come up out of the Mississippi river, fly to the nearest light, and die. There was nothing on the streets the night I was there but streetsweepers, police cars and one Corvette. On the railroad bridge across the rrriver, there was a front-end loader going back and forth, since they had to leave the navigation lights.
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# posted by : 7:08 AM
: 7:08 AM << Home
