Ah, summer is upon us, and love, or rather lovebugs, are in the air. Twice a year Florida is invaded by millions of romantically-inclined beetles that, during their three-to-four week mating season, put on their little beetle headphones, listen to their little beetle Barry White music, and, to use technical terminology, “get it on.” Which would be perfectly acceptable if they did all this in the privacy of their little beetle Motel Sixes — but no, they not only do this in broad daylight, but while flying at the same time! We are talking an ongoing onslaught of beetle mile-high clubbers!
I’m told that the swarms of paired-up lovebugs are so thick that they can actually be seen from the International Space Station, which certainly answers one of my most vexing questions: “What exactly do they do in the International Space Station once they’ve mastered zero-gravity toilets?”
I should also add that the newly-fertilized lovebug eggs are highly acidic, and the bugs themselves are highly attracted to automotive fumes, which makes me wonder if the highly-acidic little beetle babies aren’t confusing underhood batteries with a mosh pit at a Justin Bieber/Miley Cyrus concert.
Needless to say, highly-acidic, conjoined, flying lovebugs whose little lovebug minds are not all that concerned with basic navigation skills at the time, and automotive windshields, paint, radiators and air filters are not going to play all that well together. Experts say the maximum amount of time that should pass before you should wash the SLA (Splat Lovebug Acid) off your vehicle’s finish is somewhere between a Dodge Challenger SRT Heckcat’s zero-to-60 time, and the amount of time that Carly Fiorina will be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.
Local auto parts stores actually sell Frederick’s of North Central Florida mesh auto bras to block the lovebugs from getting though the grill openings and clogging up the radiator. The fact that they sell year round makes me wonder if there is not some “re-purposing” going on here, but then again maybe we should just credit this to global warming and let it go. But you have to wonder…
Air filters don’t stand a chance. During lovebug season the door-to-door filter salesmen are as thick as, well, as thick as lovebugs. And if you have a newer vehicle with one of those cabin-air filters, you’re doubly dunked. In addition to having to take half your dashboard apart to get to the filter, there is also an excellent chance that some of the lovebugs got through alive, and once uncoupled, they are not happy campers! Plus, post lovebug love making, they get the munchies something fierce. And, as luck would have it, their favorite snack food is, wait for it…. plastic! Right, try turning that claim in to your insurance company — wreck caused when post-coupled lovebugs trapped in cabin air filter compartment chewed through wall, and proceeded to chew through number-seven green wire in wiring harness, which just happened to be … the airbag triggering wire. Where is that Geico lizard when you really need him — obviously not enlisting the aid of his stunt-double lizards to pluck those little two-for-one tasty treats out of the air before they do a high speed come-apart on your windshield! (No, we’re not going to do the joke about what’s the last thing that goes through a bug’s mind when it hits your windshield.)
And to be honest, you seldom see Lovebug Florentine on any of the menus at your typical lizard diners and dives. I’m thinking all that acid would give them heartburn, and, to the best of my knowledge, lizard-approved Alka-Seltzer is still in the laboratory-testing stage, although what they would be testing it on is beyond me (I’m thinking the laboratory rat union would squish that one in the bud).
But bats on the other hand, love Lovebug Sushi. Sure, their main food source is mosquitoes, but c’mon, how many million mosquitoes can you eat in a day before the Roberto Duran comes out and it’s No Mas! No Mas!? Me? I doubt I could get ten down in a single serving, although I did get my little brother to eat fifteen earthworms because I promised to take him fishing, which has to be the ultimate irony since I only had fifteen earthworms.
So my new plan was to tie a half dozen bats to the front of my truck and let them intercept the lovebugs before they got to the windshield. Note to SPCA: I learned my lesson last time; I did not superglue them to the hood, so don’t even go there! After a diet of bland mosquitoes, bats must think highly-acidic lovebugs taste something like spicy Mexican food — I know their production greatly increased when I mounted that hummingbird feeder on the roof and filled it with Corona beer. Before you ask, I have no idea why you can’t find roof-mounted bat feeders, not even in the “As Seen on TV” section at Walmart. Where’s that Pocket Fisherman gadget guru when we really need him?
Long story short (you’re welcome) the bat thing worked too well. Turns out the SPCA does have a long memory, so they “showed up” at my door with a cease-and-desist on using bats for lovebug control. Something about lovebug eggs being rich in saturated fats, and the six bats had all tested positive for Type A Bat Diabetes. Since they’d never taken them in for testing, I asked how they could possibly know this. Seems that bats suffering from Type A Bat Diabetes give off a different color ultraviolet “signature” when seen from … you guessed it: the International Space Station.
Different signature my hind feathers. I’m 99.9 percent sure none of those bats could read, much less sign their names. And we wonder why public support for the space program has declined…
