Bug splatter!

owww, oww!!! mozzie bites everywhere!!! oh well... nevermind... ;p anywayz, today, had a lesson in country driving!!! decided to head off to see the famed conargo pub (and have a coke there, since i had to drive) and the mythical "treeless plain", jus a bit further than canargo... about 120km from berrigan... anywayz, went up via jerilderie, and about 5km out of berrigan, we were bombarded with locust and grasshopper swarms!!! you'd jus feel like u were driving into a minefield, and these creatures, millions upon millions, would jus swarm thickly and splatter all over the windscreen, haphazardly distributing their yellow haemolymph in such a way that u could hardly see anymore... by the time we'd passed thru canargo and up the dirt road to the treeless plain, i only had a small window left, and trails of smeared splattered-bug were left by the wipers after my vain attempts to clear a bit more viewing space...

anyhow, the view when we got there was quite amazing, hardly a tree in sight!!! the ground was as flat as anything, wild and uncultivated, but teeming with grasshoppers and locusts... i can only think that, had they any sense of emotion, they would've looked upon my car in disgust and mourned the most unceremonious losses of so many of their own kind... it's a wonder that the lot of them didn't jam the radiator and cause the car to overheat... they do say that's a major problem with driving around here, when u're hurtling along the highways and squishing bugs at over 130km/h (insert guilty admission)... popular science also has it that if u drive at 80-90km/h or below, they jus bounce off instead of splitting open...

at least, managed to find a service station on the way back to make the windscreen somewhat more permeable to light and more respectable from an aesthetic viewpoint...

who knows?!? i might be doing the country a service... the locusts and grasshoppers are seen as plagues, quite unstoppable, unfortunately... this is a worry that they're coming down as far south as berrigan and terrorising the farms around here... they've been worried about them for six months or so, and only a few km left before they're in the town... i wonder what the repercussions will be for the local industry...

but i think the bugs are angry at me... i mean, if i were a bug (of the insectoid kind, quite apart from the fluffy kind), i'd see it as a declaration of war to be ploughing thru my territory and causing massacre like that... i guess i shouldn't be surprised then, that the mozzies are out in force to cause me as much misery as they have...

signing off, your fluffy bug at war in the country... ;p dave