Behind the Headlines

Leaving here late Saturday night, I went to get in my car. Innocently, I unlocked the door and stepped forward to get in when I spotted it. I froze. I was hoping that they wouldn’t make it inland - that they would just float around happily mating over the water, spending their 24 hours of life out there in the world instead of clinging to the safety of a screen or the hood of my car. But there it was - the first fishfly of the season.

I stared at the little googlie-eyed thing before growling at it. It stared back, dumb, unshaken, impenetrable in its silence and will to live. I spotted another one on a rear window as I went to roll it down. The fishfly, apparently not wanting to give up its post, clung to the moving window until it wedged into the rubber edging. The window made a horrible squeaking noise as the bug met its demise.

I can sometimes be anxious and something I’ve learned to do when anxiety is setting in is imagine the worst possible situation. It sounds counter-intuitive, but when you peg what that is, it’s usually not as bad as it seemed when unnamed. I mention this because bugs make me anxious. The worst thing I could think of with fishflies was two-fold. One, trapped in the hair and flapping around near the ear (this drives me crazy about bugs) and two, stepping on a green slicker of the bugs, I slip and fall into a mass pile of them and end up surrounded. Yuck.

I understand how good they are for the environment and how harmless they actually are, but it doesn’t mean I have to like them.