I took my car to the car wash today. The front of the car was covered with dead love bugs. Those nasty little critters have been swarming for the past few weeks. They can cause all kinds of problems, including clogging up car radiators, and, if you don’t wash them off soon enough, their acidic little bodies can eat away at the car’s clear coat.
Have you ever heard the story behind how love bugs came to be? The story I heard for years was that the University of Florida created the little monsters as a way of combating another type of pest. Another story I heard was that the love bugs were an experiment at UF that went wrong, and then they escaped from the laboratory to annoy people for generations.
As it turns out, neither of these stories is true. In fact, the University of Florida wasn’t even involved. I suspect the stories were started by someone from Florida State.
One of the top experts on love bugs (I wonder if it says that on his resume) is Nash Turley, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Central Florida. In this video, he tells us everything we ever wanted to know about love bugs. And if you’re like me, after watching the video, you’ll likely end up understanding love bugs better, but hating them as much as ever.
I have to go scrub my bumper now. The car wash couldn’t get the lousy little pests off of it.
