Love is in the Air
We just survived another life and death experience in Florida: The annual invasion of the love bugs. These innocuously named creatures seem to have no beneficial purpose in life. They look like fireflies, but instead of glowing in the dark, they just crowd your space all day long. When they hatch, there are dozens of them per square foot, creating a nuisance, as I will describe below.
As they emerge into the world, they immediately seek the companionship of the opposite sex. Hence “love bugs.” The smaller male attaches himself to his larger female mate, tail to tail and they fly around with her in the lead and him in tow. (Sara assumes that she leads because he’s afraid to ask for directions.) When I first saw them in the air, it reminded me of a comment made by an irate divorcee at a singles forum many years ago. She got up in front of hundreds of eligible men and women and angrily proclaimed, “Men are emotional cripples, that have to be lead around by the . . . !” At the time, I dismissed the comment as having no basis in fact. Now I have reason to believe otherwise. But I’m digressing.
You can’t imagine the mess these little buggers make. A short trip to the grocery store leaves your windshield, bumper, and hood covered with hundreds of crushed bodies, embraced to each other and cemented to your car. Bike riding is even more difficult. They’re on your arms, legs and chest, procreating away. If you open your mouth, they perceive it as a tunnel of love. And you certainly don’t want that happening in your mouth!
These plague-like swarms are an amazing thing to see. Hundreds of thousands of them are in the air, wandering aimlessly in search of some unknown destination. The female is doing all the work, pulling the male along backwards in their love ritual. What he thinks is erotic ecstasy is actually airsickness. And when they splatter on your windshield, what you think is love serum is really his lunch.
Alligator Allie
Our friends from around the country are all contacting us, concerned for our welfare here in Florida. Watching the national news has everyone convinced that we’re in a life-and-death struggle with an exploding alligator population. Well, I’m glad to say we’re just fine. Actually, it’s the alligators that are in danger. No, the Red Tide isn’t getting them and neither is the pesticides leaching into the water from our lawns. It’s another outbreak of Severe Media Frenzy.
It all started with some of the local newspaper editors skipping their medication. And then at the National Convention of Headline Writers, a group of college kids slipped some concentrated Hysteria into the water supply. Right after the writers got back to work, (on a slow news day) three women in separate incidents were attacked by alligators, making the perfect storm of journalism.
First, let me tell you about the attacks. One woman went snorkeling at dusk, which is feeding time for gators, presenting herself as dinner. The second woman sat on a low trestle bridge dangling her feet inches above the waterline. We all know alligators love toes, so she was a goner, feet first, so to speak. The third woman was luckier. She was watering her flowers when a gator mistook her hose for a snake and went after it. She whacked him in the snout with the nozzle and he took off. The other non-story contributing to the hype is about all the pets that are disappearing. Again, this is being blamed on your friendly neighborhood alligator. The press, of course, ignores the fact that pets will travel thousands of miles to return to their original home. And they have also been ignoring all the dogs and cats that are walking along I-75 on their way back to Ohio.
And now, every time some loveable gator pops his head out of the water and gives someone a toothy smile, they panic and call the Alligator Police. My buddy Al, who is a licensed trapper, has been pulling about 20 gators a day out of the lakes. The TV crews are eating it up, filming Al at every chance. You’ve probably seen him on TV or on the Internet. One IQ-challenged anchor breathlessly told the TV audience that Al was so busy during this alligator insurgency that he had a backlog of 39 sightings to respond to. I quickly did the math and that came out to two days work. Wow!
At this rate, unless some real news distracts the press, the Florida alligators will soon make the Endangered Species list. With mosquitoes now almost non-existent in Florida, the only pests left will be the over-the-top news reporters.
