Bug-eriffic

Ivan and I take trips out to the desert fairly often, either for rock hounding or ghost town haunting. Yesterday, we took a trip to a rock hounding spot south of Nephi, Utah. The rock hounding book that we have hints that black and white agate can be found in this spot. Sounds purty and well worth a Saturday afternoon adventure. So, we pack up the Beetle with a cooler full of water, SoBe’s and ice, some digging tools, rock chisels and a lawn chair on which I can rest my BFB (big fat bum). A normal enough payload for a trip out to the middle of nowhere.  Right before we start our journey, I look in the car. Earwigs. Two of ‘em. Then three. Then four…then many, many more. Ick. Ick. Ick. How did they get in there?!?!  So, Ivan starts to kill ‘em. Earwigs are the lovers of the dark aka nocturnal.  They crawl under things to get out of the sun and heat. Smart little buggers. Anyway, every time we think we’ve got ‘em all. We find another…and another. I asked Ivan if the lawn chair was lying on the ground. He said it wasn’t and that he shook the thing off before he put it in.  So, icky, icky, icky, where did they come from?  We got in the car, figuring we had eradicated most of them. Happily, we made it to our rock hounding spot with only a couple of extra visitors on the floor. (Of course while we were driving, we both felt like they were crawling all over us!)  I get out of the car and Ivan looks at my BFB. Sure enough, I had two earwigs hanging on. I must have provided some good shade. Grrr.

 

We spent several hours at the remote location. The smell of the cedars and the desert sage brush was delightful. There were TONS of gnats flying around, getting in my ears (bzzzzzz zzzzzzzz) and hair. A little too annoying. Luckily the beauty of the area combined with the delightful smell made it well worth the adventure. Ivan found a ton of cool rocks, too. One rock was similar to a split geode, only the outer ring of the crystal center was a deep, beautiful blue.  Oh, and he found one super large rock that was probably 75+ pounds. It wasn’t the promised black and white agate, but rather a large stone covered with HUGE crystals on one end. It is a gorgeous find that will have a great place of honor in our soon to be developed rock garden.

 

So, we pack up our stuff and Ivan picks up the chair and out comes an earwig. And then another. They darned things were *inside* the legs of the chair!!! He slammed the chair up and down on the desert floor. Out came more. And More. And more.  Ick. Ick. Ick.  The chair was probably stuffed with them when he put the chair in the car.  I’m hoping that with the windows closed on my car that the little buggers will be baked to death today.  I saw quite a few crawl behind my back seats when we were hunting them, so I hope the heat is high enough to get ‘em even under there. Ick. Ick. Ick.

 

On the drive home, the bugs were out in force. We ended up hitting a huge moth (at least 2-1/2” long) that somehow flipped into the car and landed on my lap. I looked down and was going to pick it up and it flipped out away from me. I hope it made it out of the car alive. If it didn’t, the earwigs will probably be munching on it this afternoon.

 

Have I mentioned that the wetter than normal spring and summer have made for an unusual number of bugs and spiders?!  Ick. Ick. Ick.