Slight Detour – May 2022
In this edition of Slight Detour, we were going to discuss highway lingerie, but a bunch of insects swarmed in at the last minute to ruin everything. Let me explain.
It all starts with a swarm of bees.
Super Bowl of Beekeeping
A local television channel in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., aired a story about the journey of 18 million bees to California. Apparently, bees travel across the country from the Sunshine State to help with the almond industry in the Golden State.
FUN FACT: Almond pollination season is known as the Super Bowl
of Beekeeping.
How does equipment get to the Super Bowl football stadium? By truck. How do bees get from Florida to California? By truck!
That’s right. Bees do not fly to California. Instead, 600 beehives hitched a ride on a tractor-trailer, which totals to about 18 million bees. One would think that if the trucker felt the slightest tingling on the face, he or she would freak out. Imagine a jackknifed trailer full of bees. Worse than loose monkeys.
FUN FACT: According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, if ants are discovered in a bee shipment at a California Border Protection station, the shipment can be refused and sent back.
“That has Slight Detour potential,” I thought.
Soon after, several news stories about spiders falling from the sky came out of nowhere!
Falling Joro spiders
Large, bright yellow, blue-black and red spiders are taking over the East Coast by way of an air raid campaign, according to a loose, click-bait interpretation of a University of Georgia news release.
Native to Japan, Joro spiders arrived in Georgia about a decade ago. They are very similar to longtime Georgia resident golden silk spiders. However there is one big difference. The Joro spider has evolved to have double the metabolism of golden silk spiders, 77% higher heart rate and can live through a brief freeze.
FUN FACT: Joro spiders can use their silk as a parachute to travel through the sky in what is called “ballooning.”
Darwinism combined with air travel means these large spiders have the potential to spread across the entire East Coast via air drop. Remember “animal rain” from the last Slight Detour? It’s basically that but with large spiders on your windshield rather than fish or frogs.
Two creepy crawly stories of interest to professional drivers is a coincidence. Three is the start of a trend. This is where Land Line Managing Editor Jami Jones comes in to secure this issue’s creep crawly theme in lieu of the initial “highway lingerie” story.
Lovebug juice all over your truck
On deadline day, Jones dropped this bomb to the Land Line crew: Lovebugs are forcing motorists to grease up their cars.
It’s that time of year for the lovebugs to make love. The insects show up in masses in May and September.
FUN FACT: Lovebugs spend their entire adult life having sex. Male lovebugs live for only 3-4 days. Lovebug copulation occurs over the span of two or three days. High five, lovebugs!
The dense swarms of lovebugs are bad news for vehicles. Drive into one and find your truck with a new lovebug paint job.
According to a WGCU-TV/FM report in southwest Florida, the best way to avoid scraping off thousands of bug carcasses from your truck is to grease it with cooking oil or petroleum jelly. If you don’t feel like spending at least an hour smearing Vaseline all over your truck, you can use a dry dryer sheet followed by a wet dryer sheet to safely remove the dead bugs from the paint.
Also worth noting: Lovebugs emerge mostly in the Southeast, where motorists also can drive into kamikaze Joro spiders. Safe travels in Georgia!
Mothra attacks Land Line Now
That conversation reminded Land Line Now’s Ashley Blackford of her experience with a brown-tail moth. These insects hail from Europe before deciding to immigrate with the humans to the United States and Canada in 1890. They are mostly found in Maine and around Cape Cod.
As Blackford would discover in the worst way possible, the hairs of the brown-tail moth are extremely toxic to humans. Come into contact with a few hairs and marvel at your skin as it bursts out in rashes with potential swelling of the face. Merely being outside in Maine puts one at risk.
FUN FACT: Bees, joro spiders, lovebugs and brown-tail moths are all found on the East Coast, so find loads literally anywhere else.
Because of all these creepy crawly stories causing Slight Detour to make a major detour, there’s no time to flood another issue of Land Line Magazine with cheesy headlines describing a truck spilling a load of Victoria’s Secret lingerie and Bath and Body Works lotion all over a Kentucky highway, but that’s probably for the best. LL