Bob Sanders: Spring means more than flowers

Bugs, bugs, bugs. Good bugs and bag bugs. Somebody mentioned June bugs. I suppose they’re around. There used to always be some at certain times in Aunt Lessie’s little apple orchard. We’d catch one and tie a string to its leg and let it fly around like a toy helicopter. Some of my science education took place when me’n Howard and Herschel were digging for bait around their barn, and I came across a grub that was in the process of morphing into a June bug. Sonofagun! Loookie here!

(That might have been when we were stocking our pond. It was about the size of your guest bedroom and maybe a foot and a half deep at the dam. We were going to raise fish there.
We’d go down to the creek and catch a silversides, or maybe a small perch, and run back and dump it in its new home, where the temperature was probably about 95 ... and wonder why it would float to the top, belly up, in a short while. But we had tadpoles by the thousands.)

There are lightning bugs. Ah, when the weather was right, it was and is fun to watch them zipping around in the back yard, like so many shooting stars. Some people caught them, too, and put them in bottles or jars and watched as they put on their show.

There weren’t fire ants, but plenty of regular ants. Once, when I was about four, I had taken a Mason jar of freshly drawn well water to Daddy, who was plowing in the Ridge Field. I was sitting on a terrace, when I realized I was also sitting on an ant bed, and had ants all over me, top to bottom. I about panicked, and Daddy came running and started slapping and wiping and getting them off of me.

We never had trouble with fleas, I guess because Daddy wouldn’t allow a dog or cat to set foot inside the house. And we never had any ticks, although the dogs may have. However, along with deer, ticks are common now, as I discovered not too long ago in Frontier Country. There’s a grove of white oaks and hickories that I especially like.

I’ll go there sometimes and just sit and meditate; or put my mind out of gear and not think about anything. A couple of times after doing that, I noticed new bumps on my body.
I had been ticked.

Frosty had to dig them out. Grasshoppers abound in the hayfield.

Our wild turkeys need them for protein for the little ones.

And there are lots of bad bugs.

Yellow jackets, wasps, horse flies, chiggers, deer flies, skeeters ... and the ubiquitous house flies, always there in the warm months.

So, get your swatters and sticky strips and OFF ready, and check the screens.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Here they come.

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.