Last year in
Memphis I happened to be sharing a park bench with a very proper southern
lady. I
glanced down to see two
strange bugs
in copula as they say.
Protecting the lady's
sensibilities, I brushed them off the bench so she wouldn't see them
screwing in front of
everybody. Not minutes later, another pair, and still another.
appeared on the bench, all of them
in copula. The woman noticed my sudden interest in the
sex life of bugs and she dismissed them with "they're
nothing but love bugs." I should say so! As far as I could tell that's all they did was
copulate.
The
scientific name for them is Plecia nearctica. In polite society they are called
marsh flies, belonging to the Family Bibionidae. Evidently they have migrated up from
Mexico and they appear to have taken over
parts of
Florida. At the
moment they are moving both to the southern reaches of Florida and northward into
Georgia and
South Carolina.
Male love bugs live for 2 or 3 days (I don't wonder considering all the pleasuring they do) and the females may live for 1 week or longer, mating with more than one male.
While they do not sting or bite, their great numbers are a nuisance. During the day love bugs spatter windshields in great numbers and may clog up the radiator cooling fins, causing fast moving automobiles to overheat. Their crushed bodies may even damage a car's finish, if the mess isn't cleaned off within a reasonable time.
It's nice to know that so many bugs are having a
good time,
oblivious of the
stir they are causing among humans.