377 Beach Reading for the lake

I don’t know why my “beach reading” ends up being such heavy stuff--like “John Adams” which I read during summer of 2002 and “First Mothers” last summer. The book I brought to the lake this summer is “Locust; the devastating rise and mysterious disappearance of the insect that shaped the American frontier.” by Jeffrey A. Lockwood, professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities at the University of Wyoming. He brings together the climatological, economic, religious and political forces at work in 19th century America when the plagues of locust struck. I didn’t think anyone grieved the loss of the locust (I’ve never forgotten Laura Ingalls Wilder’s story about the locust swarms in the Little House series), but Lockwood does, and thinks when billions of creatures disappear almost overnight, we are all the losers. So I was reading “Locust” everyday as the Mayflies pelted the screens wondering if I'd miss them if they disappeared.

When we arrived on Saturday for the first week of the season, the cars, streets, houses and screens were covered with Mayflies. They are attracted to the lights and under every pole is a crunchy slimy mess, with an odd odor. Some years the Mayflies are so thick they get drawn into generators and equipment and cause power failures. Mayflies lay their eggs (8,000 per female) on the water. They sink to the bottom and when they hatch into nymphs they burrow into the sediment and feed on particulates. They go through 20 or 30 molts and finally are ready for a final day, after a 2 year existence of getting ready for sex and us, the folks on land who really don’t like them much. After some inflight mating, they lay eggs and die.

According to an article by our neighbor, Joe Day, in this week’s Lakesider, the Mayflies arrived here because of the early European settlement which disturbed the ecological balance of the lake region with agriculture, but then they were killed off in the mid 20th century when oxygen levels in the lake fell too low to sustain the nymphs. When better water quality standards were enforced and sewage and chemicals were no longer dumped into Lake Erie, the Mayflies returned. The return of the Mayfly benefit the fisherman (perch eat them) and the birds.

Joe writes, “Looking up into the evening sky and seeing the amazing numbers of little fair-like mayflies in their reproductive dance-like ceremony leaves me in the quiet reflection of a humble soul in a wonderful town of this truly incredible world. Fly on little fellas.”

Lockwood writes, “As our current environmental crisis exposes our past act of destruction--and as it threatens human populations squeezed into our favored habitats of seaboards, riverbanks, and desert margins--one can only wonder what else we might learn from the Rocky Mountain Locust. . . Along with hurricanes and drought, such creatures serve to remind the industrial world that humility is still necessary.”