Lovebugs...What DOES Love Have To Do With It?

Lovebugs here in the south are a phenomenon that takes place each year around September and continues until cooler weather sets in. These little bugs are so numerous they can make a nice white paint job look a beautiful moving black. They are pests that fly around not hurting anything, but being everywhere and landing on anything, including your face and mouth.

Where did they come from? Do they have any animal that is their natural enemy (besides a person whose windshield and grillwork is covered with them) - are they considered a part of any creature's food chain?

I wondered on that for years as their numbers seemed to increase. I asked professionals about them any opportunity I had, but not a great number of studies have been done on this insect.

One day I watched a bird flying in my yard as it scooped up a pair of these bugs. Within a few seconds it had "spit" them out, not interested in the readily available lovebug feast. I thought, "They must really taste bad for birds not to be interested in them."

But there's other insect "eaters" besides birds, so I still hoped there was something that would enjoy them and help keep the population down.

My next thought was maybe spiders would eat them. Even though they may not LOVE them, maybe they would at least snack on them. I had seen some caught in webs, so maybe...
But one of my quilting ladies told about seeing a large yellow garden spider in its web actually disengaging some from its sticky trap and carrying it over and throwing it out of the web in disgust. Well, that answers that question...

My young teenage son asked the other day why we call them LOVEBUGS, because no one LOVES these bugs! "Why don't they call them the "Really Don't Like 'Em" bugs, or "Can't Stand 'Em" bugs, something like that! "

When I explained to him that the bugs' name wasn't because of how people feel about them, but because of what they do, he had the decency to blush and wish he hadn't asked the question.

Many of us here in the southern area of our country continue to be overwhelmed by these little bugs, and I ask you ... what DOES Love have to do with it?!?

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Here's my quote for the day:
"A rumor is about as hard to unspread as softened butter."
Hmmmm...