WD40 and the Love Bugs

Mobile Alabama
Route 10 to Baton Rouge



When you drive a bus with a flat front, you spend a lot of time looking for the perfect product to clean the bug splat off your windows.

Our good friend Tony, a master of the Internet and keeper of obscure solutions he finds there, told us that the best thing to unstick the sticky entrails that glue themselves onto your windows, obscuring your vision and making you drive off bridges, run through yellow lights, or hit small people on motorcycles, is WD40.

WD40 is a water-displacement product. I have no idea what that means or how it works, or why displacing water will remove dead bugs, but it was worth a try.

Last night, as we spent a romantic and starry night among the dead transmissions and used oil cans in the repair shop parking lot, John got out his newly purchased WD40 and went to work on our filthy windows. He returned inside an hour later, sweaty and breathing heavily, and announced that as a solution, WD40 isn’t.

Now all of this wouldn’t be as catastrophic if we weren’t in a Gulf State, the geographic home of the Love Bug.

Last I’d heard of a Love Bug was in the 70’s, when it was a movie starring Herbie, a classic VW. I’d never experience real Love Bugs.

For your information, these are small insects of the fly family who spend their entire lives mating. They were, in fact, genetically engineered--in the 70's, coincidentally--by the brilliant scientists of the University of Florida, to kill mosquitoes. Unfortunately, since mosquitoes are nocturnal and love bugs are active during the day, it isn’t quite working out. But even if a few of them decided to stay up late, they still couldn’t do any good because they lack the mandibles (jaws), grasping legs, speed and pugnaciousness of predators. Of course, these mild mannered sex machines managed to escape the lab somehow, and mate and mate and mate until they now cover the entire Gulf area from Florida to Texas. And they have no natural predators. Ooops, somebody’s bad.

The body fluids of lovebugs are acidic and will dissolve automobile paint. If you wash them off within 24 hours, you’re safe. Like everything else they do, they’re slow to acidify. They are attracted to houses. They like light colored paint. Of course they do; they're totally black except for a red thorax. They leave such a lovely smear, don't you know.

These are the stupidest bugs I’ve ever experienced. I’m sure it’s all the sex. If you had sex for two days straight without a break, you’d probably crash into windows too. I was getting out of the car and six of them flew into my shopping bag. That’s 3 couples. Maybe it was a death wish. Maybe they just did it as a “Will you get off my back!” statement. I choose to label it basic-stupid, since I’ve seen them caroming off of the dog, bumping into trees, and perching in pools of Windex.

This morning, with John working the windshield wipers and me aiming the Windex at the smeared WD40 streaks from the outside – and drenching myself in the process- we managed to clean two small patches so that we could be on our way.

Fifteen minutes later, there were 8 sets of lovers pasted on our briefly-clean windshield, and god-know-how-many-more below it, baking their way into acidic harmony with our paint. My guess is, they were attracted to the smell of the WD40. Sex can do that to you.

Betty