The mayflies are here, and they mean business. Add together a non-winter and a long, wet spring, and you get what we’ve got in our house: thousands upon thousands of mayflies vying to get in so they can merge with every light bulb in the house. They’re also outrageously skinny fellows, which makes it easy for them to slip in the slimmest cracks around window and door frames.
For years, I tolerated, even welcomed the mayflies with their lanky graceful dance. I didn’t ever harm them, and let them pass through, a few here or there, each summer. This year I’m stomping on them as they walk on our floors, sometimes doing a little dance to step on as many as I can. Not pretty, not compassionate, but when you see so many mayflies flitting against the windows that you can’t see out the windows, extreme measures appeal.
Given the billions of chiggers and ticks already all around us, the migration of the June bugs (thankfully finished), I try to imagine what’s next. Grasshoppers come soon, and I’m wondering if it’ll be biblical. Cicadas will abound, and it’s the year of the 13-year cicada merging musical roars with the annual cicada. All in all, I’m a little afraid that that the deafening hum of the insect kingdom will overtake everything I know and love.
Meanwhile, I have to put such concerns on the shelf and get the broom. I have a houseful of dead mayflies to sweep up, and I shudder to think what their revenge might be.
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