The Birds and the Bugs The anatomy of a Lovebug (in case your customers were wondering) Binomial Name: Plecia Nearctica Other names: Double-headed Bug, Honeymoon Fly, Kissingbug, March Fly, Tele-phone Bug, and United Bug. Found in: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Infestation seasons: Spring (late April and May and late August and September). Lifespan: 2-3 days for males, approx. 1 week for females. Mating cycle: 2-3 days. Size: Males are 6-7 mm in length, and 6-10 mg in weight. Females are 6-9 mm in length, 15-25 mg in weight Body Chemistry: Almost a neutral 6.5 pH, but if left on a car surface, acidity level can reach 4.25 pH. Upside to lovebugs: larval stages by helping to recycle decaying vegetative matter into organic matter, according to Biology of the “Love-bug,” by LA Hetrick 1970. More profits and customers for self serve car wash owners. Downside to lovebugs: Attracted to highways, lovebugs will splat all over cars, startling drivers. They can also, according to Hetrick: • Cause liquid-cooled engines to overheat due to clogged radiators. • Reduce visibility • Etch automobile paint due to acidic nature of bugs Interesting Fact: Lovebugs do not bite or sting. Rumor Has It: A rumor has been around for decades that lovebugs are the result of a botched genetic experiment at the University of Florida. An Internet spam email going around stated: “Love Bugs are actually man-made. Scientists were genetically engineering females of a species of insect that would mate with the male mosquito, but be sterile and produce no offspring. Unfortunately, they accidentally also created a male Love Bug, and a pair somehow escaped into the wild. Since the bugs had no natural predators, their numbers quickly exploded into the millions.” However, Snopes.com debunked this tall tale, stating: “Love bugs are not the result of a genetic cloning experiment gone wrong, nor were they unwittingly loosed from a research facility charged with studying exotic insects. They also weren’t bio-engineered as a natural solution to the mosquito problem. (Love bugs do not eat mosquitoes: the adults do not eat at all, and larvae feed on decaying plant material.) These overly amorous critters are native to Central America; the best guess as to how they came to these United States places them as undiscovered stowaways who arrived by ship in Galveston or New Orleans around 1920.” FOR THE BIRDS Yes…. We are going ‘there’ Okay, I will admit it, this research made me a bit squeamish, but I know all of you can handle it. And, while my degree in Journalism, and 20+ years of research and interviewing has prepared me for a lot, I never in a million years thought I would be writing about… bird poop. Yes, that’s right, I am giving you all of the facts having to do with bird excrement. Why is it white? What is up with the blue blobs? The answers are below. What’s up with the whiteness? It all has to do with the fact that birds do not produce pure urine. According to MentalFloss, birds’ digestive systems and don’t work like most animals’. “Instead of pooping and peeing separately, they basically do it all in one weird mess. Their kidneys extract nitrogenous wastes from the bloodstream like other animals’ do, but instead of releasing it as urea dissolved in urine, birds excrete it in the form of uric acid. It comes out as a white sort of goo because of the biochemical reactions that happen to process the waste so it can be safely excreted with minimal water loss.” What’s up with the dark blobs? When there is red, blue, purple or green blobs in the droppings, that is the actual poop. According to beautyofbirds.com, it’s the only real solid part. As for the different colors? It all has to do with the bird’s diet. “Red pellets and strawberries produce a red colored dropping. (This does not apply to the urine.) Seed and green vegetables produce a green dropping. (This does not apply to the urine either.) Blueberries and blackberries produce black droppings.” Are some cars targeted more than others? There have been lots of theories and studies done on which cars attract more bird poop. Of course, unless you’re Dr. Doolittle, you’ll never know this answer. However, a little over a year ago, a done by Halfords of the United Kingdom, revealed red cars attract the most bird droppings. “Red vehicles made up 18 percent of cars marked by birds, while blue followed along in second place at 14 percent. Green vehicles got off the easiest, making up just one percent of those in the study. The sample included 1,140 cars, though there’s no indication as to the total number of each car color in the group,” autoblog.com reported. The study also stated that perhaps it has to do with the fact that if a vehicle is darker, the “deeper the reflection and the more violent the reaction.” Another theory is that blue cars suffer because the birds think they are over a body of water. In that same report, autoblog shared that Autoglym weighed in and revealed that the damage to a vehicle’s surface has to a softening of paint lacquer. “Damage to vehicle paintwork arose not from the acid or alkali in bird feces, but from paint lacquer softening and expanding to form an uneven mold around the dropping which produced a dull patch. Grainier textures from seed-eating birds produced the most blemishes, so pigeons are worse for motorists than seagulls.” Or is a spider? There is an actual spider called: The bird-dung crab spider. And, yes, it looks exactly like bird poop. To make sure you’re not about to detail a car infested with this arachnid, make sure you know what to look for. According to newscientist.com, they mimic bird droppings in color, shape, size and smell. According to Joseph K.H. Koh of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, The spider’s body has a glossy surface that gives it a ‘wet’ look of fresh feces. The nodules on the body and rough-edges of the legs further reinforce the ‘shitty’ look – pardon the rudeness. When the spider moves, the illusion disintegrates. The ‘walking poop’ no longer looks like a piece of dropping, especially with its legs spread out,” Koh says. 52 • SPRING 2021
TRACK THAT CLICK! CLICK IT IT GOOD! “We’ve been advertising to car wash operators for 7 years now, and have tried and tracked many of the different industry advertising options. As far as online opportunities focused on the car wash industry go, nothing has provided the consistent click-throughs at the rate of the CarWashForum.com.” JIM LANMAN, TOUCH4WASH SPRING 2021 • 53
Change language