WHERE HAVE ALL THE BUGS GONE!

Pop...splat...another bug splashes across the windshield as we drive along a country road. Soon, the glass resembles a bad case of measles. That is the way it always has been, forcing one to squint between the debris.

For example, years ago, I was driving in Minnesota one early evening in our 1954 Ford Ranch Wagon. We did not have a ranch and the car did not have a radio, air conditioning and, most importantly, a windshield washer. Suddenly, there came a cloud of grasshoppers--like a plague of locusts in olden Egypt. The windshield wipers only smeared body parts into a thick mesentery, causing us to pull over every few miles and attempt to clean the mess.

Once in South Dakota, we stopped at an anonymous hamburger joint for a luncheon hamburger, of course. Declining to dine inside due to prevalent flies, we decided to dine in the car. There we enjoyed watching hordes of huge flies themselves dining on all the bugs splatted on the windshield. The view was not appetizing, matching the nature of the sandwich, so we offered them to the flies, as well.

Fast forward to last weekend. We were driving through southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois for two days. Not a single bug tarnished our windshield during that trip. When we returned home, the windshield was perfectly clear-- or, I should say--as clear as it was when we began the trip. So, where have all the bugs gone?

One explanation might be that modern cars have more of a slant in the windshield and are more aerodynamic--bugs are blown away before they can splat. Perhaps another explanation could be that we were driving on roads that ran along farm fields of corn and soybeans. Could it be that pesticides applied in those fields affected the bug population?

Of course, there does not appear to be a bug shortage generally. This Summer, for example, the Japanese beetle population was thriving on our bushes. All that they seem to do is eat the leaves and have sex, generally it seems doing both at the same time.

And, in the Fall, we share our house with stink bugs and Asian fake ladybugs (orange, not red) which somehow find ways to enter. Thankfully, some spiders seem to come along, too.

I find the clear windshield phenomenon to be perplexing. I suppose I should be happy there are no bug splats. Nevertheless, it bugs me. Why are there no bugs hitting the windshield? Like everything else that we cannot explain--it must be climate change.


© Daniel J. Kucera 2018