Wednesday, May 5, 2010

June Bug Bombardment

Every spring something happens that makes me laugh, right out loud, even though I am home alone. It is June bug season - which happens now.

When the sun goes down and the darkness falls in my little valley, the light pouring from the windows of my humble little home attract the June bugs. They are large, cumbersome, hard shelled beetles that fly, but not very gracefully. Attracted to the light, they smash into the side of the house with audible thumps. Sometimes there are so many of them thumping into the side of the house that it sounds like hail. There are peak moments when so many of them are crashing clumsily into the siding that I turn off the lights. This noisy bombardment is what makes me laugh. It is the assault of the June Bug Brigade.

I have never noticed piles of them lying dead below the windows in the morning, so it must not kill them, but they hit so hard I do not know how they survive.



For some reason, I have always liked June bugs. They remind me of some innate happiness from my childhood. Maybe it was that they coincided with playing outdoors in the long summer evenings.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

We get June bugs (different than yours, by the picture) too, but not in July. Ours don't crash into windows but they fly so slowly and clumsily that I laugh too.

My Great Aunt Lily used to tell a story about how she was playing the piano (outdoors) for a singer at high school commencement -- this would have been in 1901 or so -- when, just as the singer inhaled to start her selection, a June bug flew into her mouth. Aunt Lily said she just kept playing, improvising an extended introduction until the singer spit out the bug and regained her composure! This probably occurred in Kansas, come to think of it.

Jackie said...

LOL, Li'l Ned! That could certainly happen in Kansas!!