When I was growing up, we lived in a town/city near a lot of water. When I say a lot of water, I mean not far from one of the rivers that is a main pass through between Michigan and Canada. Every year we would get inundated by what we, as kids, erroneously called "fish flies." What they actually were, was "May-flies."
As entertainment in the townhouse complex I lived in, we would go around with buckets and collect them off of the window screens, doors, walls, cars, you name it. They were always everywhere! One year we got hit really, really bad. When I say really bad, I mean they were everywhere! My Mom had a silver Vega back then. When we wanted to have air from the vents (we didn't have air conditioning, only rich people had that in their caddies!), we had these levers down by our feet that we had to pull. I assume it opened some kind of levering system underneath. Well, when we got hit so bad by the fish flies, they got into the vent system because we had left them open overnight. Talk about stink! That car stunk to high heavens for weeks!!
Being the times in which we lived, we weren't "politically correct" as one HAS to be now. We didn't worry about if a child got a spanking for mouthing off or if someone, or the neighborhood children as a whole, were cruel to...oh...I don't know...let's say for example...fish flies. Mind you, we had none of the "acceptable" ways of expressing our glee in disgusting, possibly inhumane entertainment. We didn't have Nintendo, XBox, Playstation. We had our imagination...and our bicycles. Can you imagine where I'm going with this??? Well, we would take our buckets and buckets full of fish flies and pour them out onto the sidewalk. It would look like a river of insects. Then we would ride our bikes through them. Yes folks, I said we would ride our bikes THROUGH them. I can remember they made the most satisfying (gross now) popping sound as our wheels went over them. Not satisfied with just squishing them, we would get halfway down our "river of bugs" and then put the binders on. We would go sliding through them while our bikes tried unsuccessfully to stop. Believe it or not, it was great fun!
When I've told my children this story, they think I was deranged as a child. Even the boys think I was gross...sigh...I made such a better boy than my boys do! They are afraid to touch the creepy crawlies. No tadpoles, no frogs, no snakes, no snails, no "fish flies" have ever come home with my children. I guess, when I was growing up, I collected enough for all five of us!
Hope I didn't gross you out too much! Have a great buggy day!
8 comments:
We used to do the same with caterpillers and the boys at school got great satisfaction out of putting them down the back of our dresses and then hitting us on the back to squash them
I can't believe your boys thought that was gross. I figures once they heard the story they would be ready to give it a try themselves. I think it is kind of gross. LOL
Don't feel bad. I remember as a child cuttng earthworms in half to watch them crawl away from one another.
Girl, you don't even want to know about some of the stuff we used to do. Just ask Spartan. But, I gotta admit, the may fly story is a bit over the edge. I'm impressed. I would have picked you for Red Rover!
Ok, that is gross. I hate bugs but it's the sound that would get to me as you rode over the may flies. It reminds me that I once read about a woman who would pick off hornworms from her tomato plants and throw them into the night sky for the bats to catch and eat.
Very cool, I would have loved that! Nothing like crunchy, popping bugs for perfect kid entertainment!
I love that top picture! We don't have May flies here.
And if you want to introduce your kids to creepy-crawlies, I would suggest getting a worm bin for composting. It's fairly easy, environmentally friendly and produces awesome (and valuable) worm castings.
May Flies ... YUCK! I live in Ohio and we ride to lake erie/catawba island area alot on our motorcycles and those may flies are the worst! We always forget about them until we get bombarded with them! I'll have to remember this year! Have a great weekend!
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