(RSS)
Bugs galore
Igo is a buggy place. When guests leave our place at night, we know better than to stand there and talk with the door open.
Instead, we open the door just enough to rush everyone through. We dash outside behind them to say our goodbyes far away from the porch lights and bugs.
I figured these country bugs — mosquitoes, no-seeums, caterpillars, moths, and now gnats — were just part of the circle of life. I wouldn’t dream of spraying chemicals to kill them. Destroy nature? Never.
Monday night may have changed my mind.
Bruce and I were putting Webster to bed, as we do most evenings after dinner. (Webster’s our affectionate name for this Web site) Bruce worked across the room on the big-boy computer. I worked at the kitchen table on the laptop.
Some poppy-seed-sized bugs— like fruit flies, but smaller — divebombed my laptop screen. Flit, flit, flit.
First a few. Then a dozen or more. Bugs pelted my neck and face. I looked down. Bugs all over the table. And in my wine glass. I looked up and around the house. Hundreds, maybe thousands of of them.
Every light in the house was abuzz with these —for lack of a better word — gnats. I closed the windows, convinced that the bugs had slipped indoors through hairline openings in the screens. Now that I think about it, the bugs are so small they could have passed through the screen squares if they just sucked in stomachs, scrunched shoulders and turned sideways.
I flailed my arms and yelled to Bruce, who was oblivious to the bugs that ice skated over his monitor screen and circled overheard.
I grabbed the laptop, ran for the bathroom, shut the door and stuffed a towel under it. That’s where I worked all evening. I only came out when Bruce yelled to come look at the sidelight windows by the front door: completely covered with the crawling, flying insects. (I tried to photograph it for you, but I did a lousy job, what with the darkness outside and light inside.)
Basically, we had ourselves an insect home invasion. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Second thought, I have. It was about this time last year. Bruce and I drove home from the Bay Area when we stopped for gas at a truck stop around Orland. A huge black cloud of insects swarmed the station. People ran to pay with shirts over their heads. All the vehicles’ bumpers and windshields were thick with dead insects.
Nightmare material.
That’s how it looked Monday night in Igo. At some point, those large pale moths that recently hatched from our earlier caterpillar invasion appeared on the windows outside and acted like vacuums. They did their best to suck swaths of the tiny bugs. But there were many, many more teeny bugs than the big moths. It was a losing proposition.
The following morning our place looked like the site of a bug massacre. Inside, dead grayish brown bugs dotted every surface, especially beneath any light source.
Outside, thick piles of dead bugs covered window sills, screens edges and doormats.
I left a message about our insect issues for an expert, Paul Kjos, Shasta County’s agriculture commissioner.
“What’s this about a bug invasion in Igo?” he asked.
Suddenly, it sounded absurd, even to me.
I explained what we’d seen the night before. I told about the millions of morning-after bug bodies.
Surely he’d heard from others, I said.
“Uh, no, we haven’t,” he said. “First I’ve heard of it.”
I pictured Kjos writing a notation: Greenberg: crazy bug lady - Igo.
Even so, he politely answered all my questions. Kjos said it sounded as if our property was visited by what lay folks might call gnats; actually members of the moth family, albeit very tiny ones.
He humored me and asked if I could collect a small sample of the dead bugs and bring them by his office.
I’m on it.
I’ll get the shovel.
338 views
EEEEWWWW!
There was a swarm of those over my patio table the other night. I can attest that if you put a glass of wine near them they will all dive headfirst into it and drown.
Diving into your glass of wine is the last straw!! I’d spray. Pat J.
Good morning, Doni!
I agree that we should not use chemicals to kill bugs, but if I had that many of them I would definitely blast ‘em.
Swimming in my “two buck Chuck” would be the last straw!
Andrea, I had the exact same reaction-just didn’t know how to spell it!
That’s exactly what happened to us! We went to bed, opened the window, turned on the bedside light to read and OH MY GAWD we were swarmed.They were everywhere. All over the walls and even on the bed. Zillions of them. Yuck!! I too hate to use any spray but used a soap water combo to bomb ‘em finally in self defense. So relieved that weren’t just targeting us ;^)
For all of us in Igo that do not have a bug problem-thank you to all of you that do.
As for Doni’s sanity-that is still to be determined. Frankly if she is the “crazy lady of Igo”, we must have a really great place to live.
Maybe she needs to hang some more hummingbird feeders?
Welcome to late spring in Igo (or at least our part of it)! Every year, just when the nights get the nicest and we’d like to keep the windows open during the evenings, we’re attacked by the gnats. We’ve learned after several years here, to keep the windows shut until we turn out all the lights. We’ve tried spraying, but there are too many of them. My portable vacuum gets a real workout every year too — even if you don’t open the windows until all the lights are out, you still have a mess to clean from the window sills in the morning. As for the corners of your ceilings (you know, where the spiders have their little webs) — well, forget it! At least until the infestation is over. Then you get to climb up there and dig them out. Ah yes, the joys of life in the country! And still, I wouldn’t give it up. The bugs are just another reminder that we’re privileged to live where nature reigns supreme
Doni, I can sympathize with you. Last year, about this time, we were in Oregon, at an RV park along the Rogue River. Some sort of awful bug found its way into our RV, and were everywhere. Gene had to get the portable vacuum out and suck them up. It happened everyday for three days. They were red and black and seemed attracted to the white areas of our RV. I spoke with the park attendant and he said, “oh, it only happens for two weeks every year, they will be gone soon!” I journaled it in my RV diary to remind me not to go there at “bug time”. I do not like bugs in my space. They need to stay outside.
Doni, so where are all the gnaardvark’s when you need them?
This makes me laugh! Years ago, while living 7 miles off Gas Point Rd. from I-5, I was home one night. My daughter of 3 yrs. old was sleeping, and my husband was at the car races in Anderson. It was about 10:30 PM on a Sat. night. I was relaxing and enjoying a quiet evening watching Johnny Carson. We had 5 acres without too many homes around us. We also had a nice size natural pond a good distance from our house.
As I was watching Johnny, I had one lamp turned on near the sofa I relaxed on. The porch light was on, and I had the front door open; The screen door was closed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw something crawling up the wall near the lamp. It was a little tree frog!
I grew up with frogs and toads of all sorts. I used to collect them, kiss them, play with and then unknowingly drown them in pools of water. I didn’t do it on purpose. I just thought they liked the water, no matter what. Well, I finally learned the defination of amphibious, or something like that!
A few moments later, I saw a frog crawling up the wall again. I simply picked him up and put him outside. Good night, little fellow!
No less than 2 minutes later, I saw the little critter crawling up the wall again.
I picked him up and placed him outside again. I did this several times until I realized I was being overtaken by frogs! They ended up all over the walls and floors of our house!
I happened to have a 2 gallon glass container available. Within an hour or so, I collected enough frogs to fill the container, with just barely room for them to move.
I waited until morning to release them. They were free to live their lives the way frogs should…
In the meantime, my husband came home like a drunk skunk out of hell from the races: mean and wanting to fight. When he saw the container of frogs, he asked me what the hell was going on. I told him the true story of how the frogs came to me.
He didn’t believe me. Now, after many years of being divorced from him, I have been able to use this true story. There are frogs that are meant to be princes for those who desire it. My prince came to me soon after.
If I had to compare gnats and frogs, I would take frogs anyday!
The moral of my story is that a person “cannot” (gnat) forget the frogs. There are too many fairy tales about kissing frogs, and I am living truth that these tales can come true….
Doni, what a terrible evening! One summer evening I was attacked by bugs going down the valley. They covered the windshield and I could not see anything. Stopping in Williams, I thought cleaning off my windshield would do the trick. Wrong! The bugs were all over the place. They came in my VW when I opened the door, attacked me when I got out of my car and attcked all the customers who had stopped at the gas station to clean their windshields. I could not open my windows until after Arbuckle. It was like being in a science fiction movie. They were rice bugs and come out on hot summer evenings.
I had a summer job working for a custom haybailer outside of Merced. The hours were 7pm ’til 2 or 3 AM. I learned very quickly to not use the lights mounted on a pole above each of the tractor fenders. Bugs would fly into them, die, and fall down the back of my neck and under my shirt. Between the bugs, the pheasants the tractor would scare up, and the coyoties that would run through the fields it was nature at its best.
Well, we have them in North Carolina and I’m sick of them. They lay dead all over my house/porch, etc in the morning, but at night when you open the door and they fly in by the gagillions, I just get so upset. Isn’t there anything one can do to prevent it???