Millions Of Swarming Bugs In A Ca Town

Nope...I can't look :)

Where are the bats?

That's normally a beautiful drive. Usually around spring time there is quite a few bugs up through that way. Hope for an early freezing winter maybe.

Interesting story, but I had to close the window before I finished reading. It really irks me when I'm on paid data and websites insist on serving up video ads.....

Tis the season for bats in Tucson....it's pretty special at sunset when they take off and spend the night eating insects....maybe, we need to send them over to CA for a smorgasbord!

I went to university in Cincinnati and was there for the locust plaque that hits every 17 years or so. It really was unbelievable, an estimated 5 billion insects...it was before a/c in most cars and we had to keep windows rolled up...I recall trying to do laundry at a laundromat and couldn't even open the appliances to switch over laundry without getting a slew of them mixed in with the clothes. They were flying and bumping into everything in sight.
gross.

for more info on the amount....
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/02/29/loc_cicadas29.html

Between the fires, the drought, the pestilence, the earthquakes, and the floods that will most likely accompany El Nino this winter....kinda sounds like....well, we're not supposed to discuss religion on here.

i think that happened last year too. all that crunching when cars drove over them. slippery, rotting insects. even the birds get tired chewing on them. not a good place to blow a bubble or keep your mouth open anyway.

and yeah the cicada's are fun. bugs about 1-2" long, chiming away. then they drop dead and it stinks. leave a window open and you have them in the house. and i don't think the cicada killers do anything because i think they come out later. but its just as well, i'm not found of those particular hornets... they are something huge.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

@joy - don't forget about the comet strike...


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Joy, but I think we can still discuss movies....
Weren't Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner great?!?!?!

Were they in Armageddon? I just keep hearing the schizophrenic mother in "Sybil" banging on that piano and shouting "Armageddon!!!!"

Mike, was that comet strike in Russia?

Nope, "The Ten Commandments" circa 1956.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ten_Commandments_%281956_film%29

Ah yes Marlene...that film showed all the horrors of the end of the world, right?

Mike, the CA seed bugs haven't ever been there in numbers like this.

The last sentence on page two - about people leaving if frogs appear in such numbers - brings to mind either a creepy movie or a nail-biting novel by Stephen King or Dean Koontz. With the bugs and horrific CA drought and the upcoming, almost-guaranteed super El Nino winter, it seems as though reality is imitating art. Perhaps the frogs ARE next!

lets bring out the chocolate...

i'm hoping the super nino will give us a warm winter like they said, as well as steer storms from the east coast.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

no, Joy, it was about the exile of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt to Freedom, facilitated by 10 plagues....

Marlene, re plagues...Near Yosemite this summer there has been an increase in deaths from plague among animals, and two reports about tourists being infected. Yosemite is not far from the seed bugs' new summer home!

Thank you, Marlene...I was uninformed! My original thought was not of the plagues but of the end of the world. But when I think of it...we are constantly having floods and earthquakes and drought in all parts of the world...and it's probably been like this since the beginning of time. I was just reading an article online about Hurricane Katrina...how soon we forget.

When you travel through the cranberry bogs of Wisconsin during the frog hatch, here can be millions of tiny frogs crossing the roads to get to the bog the other side. When you dive into them at any kind of speed, it cam like hitting and icy road. Most people are so surprise that the first thing they do is hit the breaks. Bad idea. They pull dozens of cars out of the cranberry bogs every year, and some are not so lucky. I happens in the wrong place and people die.

At least that is the way it used to be 50 years ago when I lived back there. Not sure it is still a thing.

We had a frog hatch here maybe 20 years ago that was unbelievable. They were covering the roads at night and there was no way to avoid them. I haven't seen anything like that since, except for about 1995 we had a mayfly hatch that made it look like a full snowstorm under the streetlights at night. It was the fourth of July and we were waiting for the fireworks downtown, and you could hear them crunching under the tires of people looking for a parking space.

The scientist should not be baffled at all, there is nothing to be baffled about. Over the years pesticides which just about killed every living insect are no longer being used. The insects are all making a comeback from extinction. At first glance I thought it was termites in your cover photo, that is exactly what you see when termites swarm here in New Orleans They swarm at night fly up to the light source drop there wings come back down and go back to work eating wood. We have black outs, you shut all your out door lights between 8 pm and 9 they swarm at the very same time around the world in Formosa, China. Being were running down the streets from them, they do not hurt you unless you have a wooden arm or leg...lol, lol They actually swarm twice a year trillions and trillions the largest outbreak entomologist locally have ever seen.

What amazes me is the billions of insects which are unable to escape massive forrest fires and tragic loss of wild life. Hundreds of square miles repopulated elsewhere. I have never heard of the toll of wildlife in fires?


A very interesting thing I noticed this spring and summer I have not been bitten by a single mosquito and lived here my entire life as much rains as we had you would think there would be a population explosion. One factor may be we had a very harsh and long winter it was consist but the mosquito live below at the bottom of marshes and ponds or standing water. Normally they warn everyone to wear your repellant when going outdoors in the evening not this year. It may be also through awareness of leaving container fill up with water residents make sure there is nothing in the yards to attain water. They have giant planes which spray from the air to control the mosquito in the evenings. The news media warns the public its not a plane crashing they fly just hundreds of feet over the roof tops and when you see it zoom by for the first time without warning you actually think a plane is crashing. Any restaurant or coffee shop and you happen to be sitting outside you pick up and move indoors I do not care to have mosquito insecticide residue in my coffee or food.

New Orleans is seeing many more wild birds of prey such as osprey and a large hawk population and the American Brown Eagle and Bald Eagle that is exciting. It nice to see birds I remember seeing as a young boy back in the city once again. Also, we have a large population of the red and yellow breasted warbler. Summer before last there was a few of rare but not uncommon black cardinal's

Now days you hear reports of the brain eating amoeba in the water supply which have been around since beginning of time. Communities around the metro city had to halt swimming and avoid the water getting into your nose when taking a shower. There had been some reported deaths and then there is the plague in Yosemite and now a reported case in Atlanta hummmm. the plague it too has been around and seems to be coming into limelight.

Because I spend my days outdoors everyday being retired I have taken note the population of black birds, crows you only see a few of them. Every evening at twilight they would fly over the city and roost in the trees downtown. Not this year unless something may have killed them. New Orleans prior to Katrina had a very large population of the green parrot. Residents are so glad to see they are starting to make a comeback and you can hear them squawking in there enormous nesting villages. On my way over to the Mississippi River this evening I spotted a few of the green parrots.

My mother told us the story many times growing up she remembered back in the 40's when my father was station at a naval medical hospital she told us the locust swarms were biblical in Texas... She also mentioned the grasshopper the big ugly black and yellow now that is a bug for you.... . they would eat everything in sight, strip leaves off of trees etc. The one and only explanation scientist seem to forget has nothing to do with weather, or warmer this or milder winters, that the insecticides which use to kill off everything is no longer being used its as simple as that.

And the space which was once belong to the insects is now human. We have populated and taken over their natural habitat.

I remember as a kid you could go outside and see fireflys or lightning bugs you do not see them anymore in the city's you must travel outside the city zones. Folklore is about the lightning bugs if they are low to the ground chances are you will have rain....if they fly high above the trees no rain.....

Cheers, Michael Hoard Principal Actor, Artist and Photographer

I don't like those bugs ... :(!