Invasion

Occasionally, the weirdest things happen. Take last night, for example. CoolGuy went out and turned on the pool filter, in preparation for heating the spa. It's done every night. A little water mixing to get the random fallen flower or leaf out of the spa and through the filters, then he switches it so that the water is just filtering within the spa so that the heater is only changing the temperature of that smaller amount of water. He turned on the pool lights to see that everything was working as it should, since he went out after dark to start it up. Then, per usual, we ate dinner while watching Jeopardy (yeah, yeah, old geezers...)

Then, he went outside to start the heater for the spa so that we would be able to do another nightly ritual--take a nice soak before bedtime. And, bonus night: full moon. It's lovely every night to soak in the hot tub and gaze at the night sky, but the full moon makes it especially pleasant.

Suddenly, he poked his head through the patio door and called, "Come and look at this!" I was thinking, "Extra special full moon?" Nooooo....invasion!!

It looked like leaves floating on the pool surface, or flower petals or something. But it didn't make sense because the wind was not blowing, the leaves on our tree are all green and the yearly wilt-with-the-heat had passed anyway. No...it was flying bugs who'd been attracted by the pool lights, apparently. Lots and lots and lots of bugs. Drowned and floating on the surface, piling up in drifts on the steps, covering the bottom of the pool as they sank.

It was ridiculous! In seven years of living in Nevada, I have not seen this many insects, cummulatively. Seriously. This is a relatively bug-free place. I mean, what are they going to live on? Sand? Dirt? There's not much food for insects here.

You can see the orange flowers that fall from a climbing vine we have, then get blown into the pool. But they are so random, that it isn't a nuisance. But the bugs!! We think it must have been some swarm that just happen to fly by, and seeing the lights on the pool, were attracted to their doom. Since it was dark, I could only get a couple of photos near the edge with the flash. It doesn't do justice to the vast numbers floating on the entire surface, and covering the bottom.

Weirdest thing this year. They were not ants, or termites. I have no idea what they were. They had long lacey wings, and bodies shaped like a little worm. And there were gazillions of them drowned in our pool and spa. So...we scooped them from the spa, ran the filters for another half hour in the pool and they all went away. See if we leave the pool lights on at night anymore!