Pesty critters
It's a Crane Fly. Okay, so I looked it up. Each year we get a few of these critters showing up in April, but this year I've counted more than 38 billion so far. Of course you realize that's just a rough estimate. Fortunately they don't bite or sting, but you can't open a door without getting some of them in the house. I'm having to take down light fixtures and empty their flimsy carcasses out, and when I mow the lawn there will be hundreds of them flying up as I cut near the woods. I keep my mouth shut because they're lousy navigators, and will fly into you. I don't know if their tasty to humans, but fish love them. I'm not a fish, that's just my nickname, and I don't want to find out what they taste like. They're shameless too, and mate in mid air. The good news is, they have a very short life span, and will be only a memory in a few weeks.
posted by Fish-2 at 8:23 AM
8 Comments:
Crane Fly: wonder if it is the long legs? My area is dry, so we
don't see much of pesky flying insects (unless you count the dang
no-see-ums up the mountain). Our problem is spiders. Big ones, little ones, webs all over. Not sure of all the species, but no
'crane spiders'....
It must be a west or central Kentucky thing as we don't have that problem over here on the east side.
My main gripe is the one neighbor who's actually a decent sort of person but won't her grass until it's about calf high. You can see the skeeters rising out of it toward dusk every night in the summer.
Idaho, that was one advantage living in Arizona and Nevada. It was rare we were bothered by insects, but we did have an abundance of Black Widow spiders until I figured out how best to send them to the happy hunting ground.
AGT, the word is DEET. Never go out without it.
We don't see many of them here, Fish, but I've seen a few. Spiders and snakes are a problem here. When we were living in Florida an insect they call "Love Bugs" was everywhere. They would get so bad if you were on a long drive you'd have to stop and hose off your windshield and the front of your car. Obviously they were called "Love Bugs" because they also mate in the air. They fly in twos more often than not. Floridians screwed up by importing them to take care of the mosquitoes. Now they need something to take care of the Love Bugs! LOL!
Yes Gayle, but they don't have near as many mosquitos. We have the plant kingdom's equivalent here called Kudzu. It was imported to plant on newly cut road grades and the like. It is wonderful at blocking erosion. It also grows so fast it will cover whole trees killing them because it blocks the sunlight. I think if you closed a highway for a week the stuff would take the road over.
We call them daddy-long-legs and I wish we had more of them here because they eat skeeters and we have a real skeeter problem in summer because of all the moisture in the forest.
Ladybugs here Fish. I used to think they were cute until about a million of them they moved into the house last fall. I'm not sure where they mate, but it must be pretty much all they get done- I'm betting that there is nothing lady-like about them. I found so many hunkered down on Junior's bedroom window that they were blocking out the sun.
Patrick, we don't have any standing water within a couple of miles of here, so we really don't have too much of a skeeter problem. I still have some Tiki torches in the back yard I light if we're going to be out there.
Darbi, We get the Japanese Lady Bugs later in the year (they're orange instead of red), and you're right, they're abundant. Some years there's not too many, but other years makes you know they are not on the endangered species list.
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