The Love Bugs Are Back!

Scourge of the South Makes Its Appearance

The southern states are home to all sorts of pesky creatures, cockroaches, ants, and general insectoid and buggy critters. But there is one in particular that causes southern drivers to curse, rant, and commit mass murder: the dreaded love bug!

Twice a year, in May and September, the love bugs take to skies in swarms to meet, greet, fornicate, and perpetuate their pesky lineage. Small flies with black bodies and wings and an orange spot just behind the head, the scientific name is Plecia Nearctica. In south Alabama, they are simply known as the *#&$ love bugs, so called because when they emerge in flight, you rarely see one without another attached in tandem to the backside. While one is always flying forward, the other is a helpless hanger-on doomed to see the world in backward motion and pray the one in charge knows what it is doing.

The reason southern drivers despise these bugs is not because they bite, sting or crawl into orifices like some of our pest imports from Central America. Love bugs travel in pairs, fly low, and are slow moving due to the extra passenger in the back. Windshields, car bumpers, front grills, and every other exposed part of a moving vehicle are soon coated in a lovely science experiment display of carcasses. And love bug innards ain’t easy to get rid of!