Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Notes from a Dependent Brat: June Bugs

When I arrived back in Canada after an RCAF dependent's tour of duty in then West Germany I noticed some things were missing. Not in whole but in part: wasps, June bugs, and thunder & lightning.

Part Two: June Bugs

"The skies were black!"

"You're exaggerating."

"Perhaps I am, a little bit. Okay, there were strips of black against blue sky. I've never again seen anything like that in my life."

My strongest such memory is of me sitting in the back parking lot of our Iffezheim apartment building. On a beautiful mid evening the darkening skies were blue, except where there were those "strips of black": mass flights of June bugs. As I sat on a concrete block I looked up at the dramatic aerial display above. Occasionally, the pretty brown little insects would drop about the ground around my outstretched feet. Mid-air collisions, perhaps. The bugs buzzed and rattled as they ended up on their backs, little feet outstretched. Of course, when one is young one looks with boundless fascination at nature; and its occasional random acts about. (As one gets older, one gets grossed-out.)

My return to Canada taught me something about nature: Canada, southern Ontario, at least, lacks June skies of certain bugs.

The skies were black!










Part One: Thunder & Lightning

2 comments:

Adele Menegon said...

If you like bugs you might want to go north to cottage country in the spring. I understand there are certain days you can't go outside without being invaded by swarms of them.I had a friend who once said, " The mosquitoes are as big as robins!" after a May 24th trip to a cottage around Huntsville.

Simon St. Laurent said...

Absolutely! I was speaking of urban areas, of course.

Thanks for the intel.