Kim and I were carpooling with our daughter and her family, driving along Highway 31, on our way to the Peace River for a weekend of family fun to celebrate my 60th birthday, and her 30th. We would be meeting up with our son and his family there. The Florida scenery may be flat, but it is diverse with wetlands, orange groves, sod farms, cattle farms, rivers, and an array of wildlife, but one particular species of wildlife was hitting our windshield, and in record number!
Mariah was driving, noticing that the cars coming toward us all had their windshields covered in splattered bugs! They must have driven through some sort of hatch! Car after car so covered in bug juice we were positive they could barely see through it. Why hadn’t they used their windshield wipers? Probably because there were so many that it would not clear, but simply smear! We wondered where these folks had run into all these bugs, and then we heard it! Splat!!!
One bug splat on the windshield, then another, and another. Soon I had counted five splattered bugs. Mariah tried to keep up with the washer fluid and wiper blades. For a moment I thought we might get some help from the rain that I heard begin to fall, but it wasn’t rain! It was a hailstorm of lovebugs! They hit the windshield in such numbers and such force that it was only the few that got lodged in the wiper blades that allowed us to identify what they were.
I had forgotten that May was lovebug season, when they come out in great numbers to mate! By definition they do not swarm, but gather in the thousands! That is putting a fine point on it! I’m not sure I know the difference! They are more of a nuisance to humans, as they do not bite, but there are just so many of them!!! When they splatter all over your car though, their carcasses become slightly acidic and if you don’t remove them within a day or so, you could notice that they are pitting your paint! They also converge in such numbers that their dead bodies can clog your radiator’s air passages! Whoa and gross all at the same time!
Indeed when we arrived at our destination the windshield was covered in bug guts, and the grill in lovebug bodies. Our son’s new car looked the same and we were grateful for the hard rain that came later that afternoon, which helped to wash most of them off. It didn’t keep them from swarming…..I mean congregating in great numbers around us whenever we were outside, and whether they bite or not, I do not like them covering my clothes and getting tangled in my hair. It was a sight to behold, but still, ewwww!