A Carnivorous Texas Insect
Misnomer or Mystery?
Greetings all!
Yeah, yeah, I missed sending out a monthly post in July for the first time in four years. Vacation and work were the primary villains, if one dare call vacation a villain. Even though it would interrupt the flow of my creatures series, (raccoons, bears, insects, squirrels, etc.), I may write a post about an event from our vacation to take away the sting. Substack post pun intended. I hope this finds everyone enjoying “summer, it turns me upside down. Summer, summer, summer, it’s like a merry-go-round.” (If reading lyrics from pop songs does not encourage reluctant writers, I don’t know what else to do.)
Hope you enjoy, and as always, thanks for reading!
A Carnivorous Texas Insect
A recent trip back east to spend time with my family reminded me of, to this date, an unexplained insect interaction from my adventure tour guide days in Texas.
My brother lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A visit in the summer to that town means, if at all possible, a visit to Crane’s Beach. Crane’s Beach is often ranked among the top beaches in that state. (Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester may be my personal favorite.) This distinction holds meaning when acknowledging that a string of stunning beaches run up and down the Massachusetts arm that flexes as Cape Cod. Further elevating this honor is that Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard host a few fair beaches. People from the North Shore, the area north of Boston, seldom note that the South Shore (the coastal area south of Boston) exists, but if it does, there may be nice beaches there as well.
Any beachgoers from the North Shore know that come mid-July to mid-August, tenacious pests known as greenheads will likely torment your Crane’s Beach sojourn. Escaping the humidity (or the desire for seasonal coastal joys) to enter a more hospitable climate necessitates sporadic battles with greenheads at beaches located near marshes.
The greenhead horse fly, or salt marsh horse fly, will pursue a person like any predator pursues prey vital to their survival. Greenheads need the mammalian blood to nurture their eggs, so only femaie greenheads pursue us. What the males do I have no idea, which may sound familiar to many non-football fans come NFL Sundays.
Why are they called greenheads? I do not believe their heads are green, but their green eyes dominate the fronts of their heads, creating the illusion.
Greenheads are tenacious predators. Years ago, a greenhead was pursuing me so voraciously at Plum Island that I ran into the water, dove, and swam underwater as far as my breath would allow. When I emerged from the water, the greenhead landed on my head. When greenheads are in season, a crowded beach is preferable to grant beachgoers respites during high predatorial season. In the end, once a greenhead locks onto you, it’s often a fight to the bite or their demise.
Greenheads are larger than house flies. And their bites corral your attention immediately. This trip to Crane’s, I scored five kills to three bites. Two of the kills happened during the exquisite sensation of the greenhead bite. When the salt from the sea water is drying, it is especially difficult to notice them. Like mosquitoes, the blood that squirts from them on your skin does not ring of victory, just that you were too late to the swat. And their bites are bigger and hurt more than mosquitoes. Unlike mosquitoes, their bites seldom go unnoticed.
“But that’s not what I came to tell you about,” as Arlo Guthrie says during the live version of “Alice’s Restaurant.”
On the same visit to my brother’s, Japanese beetles were in the air and on many plants and occasionally people’s hair. At 3am one night in bed, out of a sound sleep my wife lurched upward to sitting position, pulled something from her ear, squished it, and went back to sleep. A Japanese beetle had lodged in her ear. I don’t think she remembered it until I asked the next morning when she showed me the carcass on the duvet. Seasonal pleasures, I suppose…
“But that’s not what I came to tell you about,” as educational as these insect passages may have been.
This all brings me back to the aforementioned insect interaction years ago at Palo Verde Canyon State Park in Texas. I recall setting up camp then going to the rest room. In each of the two urinal screens were dead scorpions. I would have felt better seeing two dead baby dragons. This discovery was not the grandest of announcements to make to a group comprised of Europeans, Japanese and Australians, but it had to be made.
Whether this is Arizonan rural legend or uneducated (dumbass?) tour guide lore, I used to think the most common place people got stung by scorps was the derriere. (Untrue, hands and bare feet are the most common body parts to be stung.) But during this Bostonian’s first season on the road, I ran tours with the aplomb, arrogance, and ignorance seldom seen on the roads of America. My knowledge of western entomology was minimal and phobic. Hence, I felt it incumbent on me to announce to the group to lift their toilet seats prior to conducting their sit-down business. This announcement disproportionately affected one gender of our group and was not met with esprit de corps.
But again, “that’s not what I came to tell you about.” A boring digression for a few readers as no one got stung by a scorpion.
I know that’s what you were hoping! To debit some of your disappointment, one of my sons was once stung by a locally named peanut butter and jelly scorpion, but not on his arse, on his bare foot. As obvious as this should be to anyone who has visited the Sonoran Desert, do not mistake Arizona for a California beach.
That night, as usual, I slept on the roof rack of my company van. My vast entomological base of knowledge informed me that there was no way a scorpion would climb up a van or the van’s ladder in the middle of the night. Or ever. Farcical would it be to fear such a possibility. But what about other insects?
That night, I woke up in the middle of the night with my right ear lobe stinging. When I put my index finger and thumb on the lobe, it felt like sugar and some sticky fluid but stung like salt in a wound. The skin on my ear lobe felt as if had been peeled back as well. Maybe some very romantic insect had laid eggs there, or left waste materials, or was leaving food for later, I had no idea and still have no idea.
I got out of my sleeping bag, walked across the scorpion campground, washed it out at the sink in the rest rooms, and went back to sleep. My earlobe throbbed a bit, but I got some rest.
I cleaned it out again the next morning. The lobe was red and raw−more like a Texas raccoon gnawed at it than an insect performing some ritual survival behavior. The group and I packed the van and drove onward to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
The earlobe stung for a few more days. Uninsured at that time, I was not one for medical visitations unless in a state of abject misery or incapacitation. I will happily entertain hypotheses as to what thing, creature, or insect did that to my earlobe. Only one lesson could I take away from this insect encounter. Like outlaws and an occasional sports team, sometimes when you get to Texas, it’s just best to get the hell out of Texas as soon as you can. As Texas’s ironic and catchy motto used to be as seen on the occasional bumper sticker, “Don’t Mess With Texas,” and evidently, their insects. I’m guessing a few folks from Oklahoma, Arizona, and definitely one guy from Massachusetts would agree.