Bugs (not for the squeamish)

This is high season for flying insects here at Whitelees. This week the crane fly has started coming in to the house at night in their flappy hoards. We have been known to suck up to 30 crane flies with the vacuum cleaner in the front room in an evening.

They don't sting or bite and they look like giant mosquitoes. The local name for them is Daddy Longlegs. For me a Daddy Longlegs is a spider. We would find numerous Daddy Longlegs crawling across our tent when we're camping. I have seen a couple of these over here in Scotland, but not nearly as many as back in the Midwest when camping.

Speaking of spiders, there are more of those too. When the flying insect numbers increase it is only natural for the things that eat the flying insects to show up. I like the shadow that I got with this spider photograph. This guy is on the ceiling of our bedroom. It looks to be some sort of crab spider. Good thing I don't sleep with my mouth open. :-)

I'm not really that afraid of spiders. I just don't want them on me. I had a huge one climb onto my hand while I was riding my bike earlier in the week. It looked for all the world like a really fat Black Widow but I know that those aren't found in Scotland. It must have been hiding on my bike in its dry insect filled storage area. Naturally, I screamed while shaking the spider off the back of my hand. (shudder!) If it had the sense to stay on my bicycle, I would have stopped and had a good look at it before flicking it off into the weeds.

When the crane flies show up in August I am always reminded of other bugs that used to show up in other houses I have lived.

When we lived in Bismarck, North Dakota we had loads of box elder bugs. I also had box elder bugs on my house in Iowa City. They came in their thousands at the end of the summer. Again, thankfully they don't bite. They just get on you. You would find big lumps of the bugs on the warm side of the house. They'd crawl through any crack into the house and just make themselves a nuisance. They also will look like a cock roach if you don't have your glasses on. Thankfully you don't have to purchase poison to get rid of them. Soapy water does just fine. I could be found in the autumn, squirting the south side of my house with soapy water and standing back as big clumps of box elder bugs fall off the siding.

According to my mother, my sisters and I used to eat these when we were tiny tots and didn't know any better. We used to sit on the porch, picking up "boogs" with our thumb and index finger and popping them into our mouths. She stopped us when she saw us doing this, but the fact remains that we ate them.

My brother Tom never ate box elder bugs. He ate moths, the big powdery ones called miller moths. I remember this very clearly. It was before he could walk. As he prowled the living room on his hands and knees, he would actually hunt for these moths and eat them. More than once, I'd find Mom fishing another moth out of Tom's mouth. He seemed to really like them and would be upset if Mom stopped him. It was because of Tom's genuine desire to eat these moths, out of curiosity my mother actually tried one once. Yuck! I thank God that none of my own children ever ate bugs.