It's nearly June. They're bugs.

And it's dark, and 11pm....

It’s 11 pm. You’ve just turned off the light. Suddenly you hear a hellacious buzzing above your bed. And it’s coming closer.

Then it’s on your head, in your hair.

Welcome to spring in Nova Scotia. Three nights in a row.

Welcome to June bugs.

They’re only an inch or so long, but they sure sound and feel bigger.

And why only one each night? And how do they get in the house?

To quote from the article linked above:

June bugs are found within the genus Phyllophaga, derived from the Greek phyllon (leaf) and phaga (eat). This name is a literal description of the adult’s habit of feeding on plant leaves.

Another remarkable column tells us more:

They are a species that carries on its affairs in darkness—in fact, Wikipedia cryptically states that adults die after being exposed to the light for too long. A number of years ago, the local JB population boomed, and the sounds of June bugs as they flew into and fed in the trees at night was loud enough to be mistaken for a breeze rustling the leaves. June bugs spend the day sheltered under the ground (or in the woven, front door mat—without tearing their flying wings, thanks to those elytra). They emerge after sunset over a period of several hours; yet at dawn, the whole population disappears within ten minutes. A June bug got into the BugLady’s house one night, and the cats found it the next day in the rug, burrowed under the foot of a chair.

Anyhow, serious creepy, and I still don’t know how they get in.

We’re living in the country, and are getting to know a whole new group of insects. I’m honestly pretty easy-going about bugs. Live and let live, etcetera. We all have our place in the world, and our functions, and we all contribute.

I would though make an exception for these guys:

Coming into Nova Scotia we knew that ticks were a growing problem. What we didn’t grasp was how stupidly ubiquitous they are around here.

There were ticks in Kelowna when I was growing up, and in other places where I’ve lived, but they were one of those odd-ball occasional things that you might see once every couple of years.

Around here, if you’re doing yard work and forgot the DEET insecticide, you could come back with four, five or more of the little buggers burying their head into you, trying to suck your blood.

The grand-kids are EXPERTS at spotting them, and yelling “TICK!” I’m getting better at it as well - not the yelling, just the slow turn in front of the bathroom mirror looking over every inch of my naked body for tiny black dots that weren’t there before.

And then of course using the custom tick tool to drag them out from under my skin.

(I’m actually from an age when the preferred tool for getting rid of ticks was a lit cigarette. How the heck we didn’t wind up with permanent scars is beyond me.)

Every pharmacist is on call for tick related consultation, and was able to tell us that in fact it would have to be sucking on you for twelve or more hours before Lyme disease becomes a significant risk. That, at least, was reassuring.

I now understand that ticks aren’t a significant danger as long as you deal with them promptly. It’s only if you don’t know they’re there that you’re facing a serious risk.

But they still are creepy little buggers, just in a different way from June bugs.

And I hope that the two of them never breed with each other….