Love Bugs, Lawn Lobsters, Etc.

Southeast Texas is a buggy place. OK; but how to explain the unearthly bugginess of the place where I am now working? The infestation is almost biblical. There are so many crickets in the store that we could open a bait shop. And then there are these big black beetles crawling all over the place...dying all over the place...the floors are littered with crunchy black insect corpses. And it wouldn't be Lumberton if there weren't a few cockroaches too. Worst of all, we are now plagued with the flight of the love bugs, so called because they fly around in pairs, attached together, "doing it" in mid-air. Apparently they are attracted to light surfaces...like the outside walls of our store. It's a bug orgy, and messy, and a nuisance.

The wet weather of this past week has brought back the lawn lobsters...crayfish are again burrowing in my backyard, building mud chimneys in the grass. Fire ants are back too; I poisoned several ant mounds today. Very persistant pests. The only noteworthy bird seen today was a male Summer Tanager dining on fruit in a neighbor's yard.

Days are warm, but the nights have turned cool. Weather has been pleasant in recent days. The last round of storms filled the pond almost to its brim, and the fish and turtles are happy.