It’s that time of the year in Florida when those pesty yet romantic lovebugs make themselves one of the horrors of living in the Sunshine State. Twice a year, like many married humans, lovebugs begin to mate. Unlike humans they preform this blatant sexual activity out in the open for everyone to see. In the process, corrupting Florida’s youth and even worse making life a nightmare for drivers. While in the throes of wild passion along roads and highways they smash into your windshield like kamikaze pilots making a massive ghastly mess.
As well as making it difficult to see, these zealous lovers crash into car hoods, bumpers and any other part of your car. Left there for too long their acidic remains will eat at the paint on your car. Nice!
I bet they don’t talk about all this in Florida’s tourism brochures! Hey, come on down to Orlando in May or September. See Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and thousands of lovebugs swarming around like locust blanketing the landscape! If you’re lucky, or really not lucky, your curious young child might even ask, “Mommy, what are those bugs doing?” Yeah, none of that gets mentioned in the tourism ads. They are too filled with photos of pristine beaches and girls in bikinis. The lovebugs are left for the folks who live here all year round.
Lovebugs, like most of the human population, are not native to Florida. These little creatures originated in South America, eventually making their way up to the Sunshine State. Like so many other transplants, they liked it and decided to stay.
In truth, lovebugs are not really bugs, they are a part of the fly family. However, unlike flies they are completely harmless. They transmit no diseases to humans or the environment. They don’t bite, sting or pose a threat to crops or any kind of plants. What they mainly do is twice a year, generally late April/early May and again in late August/early September is procreate and in the process cause havoc along the roads.
Males travel in swarms, on the prowl, eventually hooking up with females. They connect, mate and cling together forever after. During this period, they hover along roadsides in ecstatic sexual abandonment, inadvertently while lost in passion ambush automobiles as they pass by. Needless to say, it’s a big boost for the carwash industry.
The scientific name for lovebugs is Plecia nearctica. For some of the more sensitive folks lovebugs are also known as kissingbugs.
So for all the snowbirds who took flight back up north in March and don’t come back until October or November, and to all the tourists who visit Florida for the nice weather in the winter, let it be known Florida during the hot, sticky, humid, unbearable summer months is also a state that twice within five months are infiltrated by nasty, acidic love connected bugs.
John Greco Author/Photographer 