Something’s NOT Bugging Me
For me, this summer has been one of the nicest I can remember. Every day in the 80’s with minimal amounts of rain and gentle breezes has made Buffalo, the Miami of the north albeit for a few weeks. Already, meteorologists are saying this summer is one of the warmest ever recorded in the area. I have long held that this alleged global warming thing is really working out for Buffalo.
But they’re something really strange happening right under our noses and nobody seems to notice. I first wrote a column on this phenomenon several years ago after I perceived it from my own observation. But the issue reawakened in me when I was listening to a call-in radio show and a caller mentioned he noticed the disappearance of bugs in the environment. He like I, have observed that bugs have disappeared. Where have all the bugs gone?
When I was young, I recall bugs everywhere in the summer. I’m not just talking mosquitos, but a plethora of other flying creatures that I just don’t see anymore. At night the street lamps and house lights would attract teams of critters of all sorts and shapes. All kinds of moths, sandflies, crane flys, and mosquitoes of all varieties and sizes would swarm by the thousands near any visible light sources.
As I write I’m looking out at my neighbor’s night light and I don’t see a single insect hovering around it.
And when was the last time you have seen a firefly? I imagine if you’re younger then 40 years of age you probably don’t know fireflies exist or have never seen one in person. I vividly remember playing at dusk in my grandmother’s backyard on Genesee Street and there would be scores of firefly’s glittering in the night air. I haven’t seen one in the city sense those days.
During the day the environment would be teaming with all sorts of bugs and critters. Remember dragonflies, those iridescent elusive winged wonders were common visitors to the backyards. There were always plenty of yellow jacket and bumblebees that were forever buzzing around the wild flowers and bushes . It seemed a bee stung everyone at least once in their lives and lived to tell the tale. Remember horseflies? They were aptly named because they were hugh and nobody dared to mess with them because they supposedly had a terrible, but I never knew of anyone who actually bitten by one. And there were butterflies and caterpillars of all of all color and patterns around the greenery.
I must confess here that I may have contributed to the diminishing butterfly population because I would occasionally catch one and then place it on spider webs that were spun in the nooks and crannies of our house. I would get a kick out of watching the lurking spider spring from his hole and wrap-up and drag the flailing doomed butterfly back into his den to be devoured later. I know.. I know.. I fully expect to burn in hell because of it.
As a child one of my first chores was cutting the grass in the back yard with the old style push mower. I vividly remember how the grasshoppers would jackknife everywhere when I cut through their path. I cut the grass today and haven’t seen grasshoppers in my yard in years. There were even times when a garner snake would slither in the lawns undergrowth. I may have been real tough with butterflies, but snakes brought out the little girl in me, real quick.
Perhaps its just my imagination – the bugs from my youth have flown away. But make your own observation and see what you don’t see.
Perhaps it’s global warming that’s causing this, but maybe it has more to do with all the pesticides and chemicals that permeate in every aspect of our environment. Go to Home Depot and there’s row after row of pesticides and insecticide designed to eliminate so-called pest and infestations. Do we really understand the cumulative affect of feeding poison to all our natural annoyances and irritants in our lives? Maybe the insects leaving the scene are a cosmic warning that we will be next to disappear from earth. Tonight, go outside and look at the street light in front of you’re place and ask yourself where did the bugs go? That really bugs me.