The poor things -- every summer, as soon as the rain comes, these plain brown beetles struggle out of the ground only to end up stunned and on their backs on our veranda, or smashed against our windows, or, worse, into the car headlights.
We
don't have screens at Tarzali, so we have to shut all the windows and listen to the sounds of beetle suicide. Last night I was reading in bed, hearing the soft but tragic bump, bump, bump against the bedroom window. I couldn't stand it any longer, had to abandon the book, but the split second (I swear... the absolute, exact, split second I turned the light out, the noise stopped as if the beetles had been in the middle of flinging themselves at the glass and were then propped in mid air.In the morning, the front veranda was covered with beetle carcasses, and of course, how the guinea hens loved that!
But I decided I needed to know how this whole attraction to light thing happens. (As a romance writer I've written often enough about similarities between moths and flames and falling dangerously, headlong in love, but I've never really understood the science behind it). The answer is interesting, and as we might have guessed, the moon plays a part. You can read about it here.
1 comment:
Oh that's an awful thing to have to bear. Nature can be very cruel. But that's the way the world works, and it is good for the guinea fowl. I would have been no good in The Olden Days.
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