Yes, another haiku.

Sort of. With April coming to an end, I am often reminded of the simple Brown Drake. These mouthless waifish insects hatch from the water in great droves during the month of may, hence their common name, the mayfly. Depending on the species, they’re pretty small and their life above the water is a short one, usually a few days. While their lives are naturally short, but it doesn’t help that every animal that does have a mouth wants to eat them. Birds, bats, spiders, dragonflies, and even fish (They make great bait).

Now you’d think there might be some competition to get one of these tasty, tiny things, or that the poor mayfly is in danger of being decimated by so many predators. But when I say that they hatch in “droves”, I am seriously understating it. These things hatch in biblical proportions. My parents’ lake house is covered in one variety of mayfly or another throughout spring and into the summer. Covered.

The spiders that weave great webs in the corners and overhangings of the house are visibly distressed, not knowing what to do with all these crazy bugs that are carpeting their webs. I imagine it starts off nicely enough, “Oh look! Stupid mayflies are getting caught in my web! Nom nom nom nom nom.” But then things quickly get out of hand. The spiders can’t wrap the mayflies fast enough, their webs are wrecked with the carcasses of an ever increasing number of little ephemeroptera bombarding them. The spiders begin to panic, and just when things couldn’t get any worse.

Ricky comes home.

...WAHHHH but Riiiiiiiiii-ckyyyyy...

So screw the ides of March. It’s mayfly season that you have to watch out for.

This post was brought to you by Portal 2. Which I can’t stop playing. Holy crap, it’s good.