There’s three of him!
Aww, I wish there really WAS three Datas.
Yep, Data is still staring out the bedroom windows at night. The bugs are attracted to the light in our bedroom and spend all of the time the bedroom lights are on banging against the window. Some of them are big and loud, so it’s very entertaining for Data!
Seeing all these bugs reminds me of being at my Grandma’s place on the Mississippi River in Guttenberg, IA. She also has a lot of glass in her house and the bugs swarm the windows at night when it gets dark and the lights are on.
When the bugs are really bad – like during mayfly time – her community will turn off the (very few) street lights on her street, as to not attract them.
Do you guys know about mayflies? Their eggs are laid in water, then they sink to the bottom and stick to plants and stones. They take a few days to a couple of weeks to hatch and will spend up to two years in the water before emerging as an adult fly.
Christina showing off her mayfly friend
And that is when shiz gets cray. They all seem to emerge at once, resulting in swarms of mayfly blackouts. One time, Steven and I were driving to Guttenberg and we thought the lights were out on a bridge – nope, they were just completely covered in mayflies.
Luckily, the mayflies only come out in this big batch once a year, and they only live a few days! And apparently, 18 trillion (?!?!!?) of them hatch along the Mississippi River each year. They’re actually good for the ecosystem, but ew, ha ha. They don’t creep me out too much, but one time, my dad and I were going along the river (me running, him biking) and we came across a swarm of them and they were all over us! That definitely inspired us to get moving faster!
Themocracy
I do know mayflies. I grew up beside a lake. It’s crazy when they hatch. Fishermen also swarm when that happens 🙂
Yes! Lots of fish activity when the mayflies go to shore to dry out their wings!
I never heard of mayflies but now I know! Fascinating. I grew up catching lightning bugs (fireflies) in Ohio, which we don’t have here in Belgium.
We have a few lightning bugs here! I should research them – I am interested to see how they work and where they live!
I think I’ve seen mayflies before, but I definitely wouldn’t want to get caught in a swarm of them now. I know that they’re important and a key part of the ecosystem, but it makes me uncomfortable to think about a ton of them crawling on me! I hope you don’t get too much of a mayfly blackout this year, 18 trillion sounds insane!
We have mayflies but nothing like your description. I actually learned a lot more than I knew, which was basically they aren’t mosquitos.
Sticky bugs! That’s what we always called mayflies when I was growing up. I didn’t live too far from a lake, which I imagine is where they came from. We certainly didn’t have Mississippi River levels of mayflies, but we’d have ones that would come and live out their lives on our window screens (hence the name sticky bugs – they just stuck there!)
omg, that video is HORRIFYING!!!!!!!!
Cool shadow capture of Data.