Where Have All the Bugs Gone?
By Cindy Perry
Where have all the insects gone, long time passing?
Where have all the insects gone, long time ago?
Where have all the insects gone?
Humans (smushed them? sprayed them? killed them?) every one.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
N
o, this isn’t a verse for Pete Seeger’s 1955
folk song, “Where Have All the Flowers
Gone?” It’s about what’s happening
to a critical building block of our
ecosystem, bugs. Has there truly been a decline in the
insect population? Does it matter?
As a child, at dusk in our city home outside of Boston, my
brothers and I used to race around the neighborhood and collect
fireflies in glass jars. Using these “natural flashlights” to navigate around the yard and
watch the bugs light up and blink was better than watching The Ed Sullivan Show.
Even though I didn’t really understand the significance of firefly light dances or how they
produced light, I had a blast.
I also remember seeing lots of colorful butterflies fluttering around my grandmother’s flower garden
and noticing many ladybugs on our pansies and lilac bushes. On road trips, the windshield of the family
station wagon would become blurred with hundreds of dead insect carcasses. Although I still believe that
there are too many mosquitoes and gnats, and I’m not particularly fond of love bugs, I now realize their
value for our birds and wildlife. In the past few years, I haven’t noticed as many fun bugs—butterflies,
ladybugs, honeybees, and fireflies. Further, I don’t need to stop mid-way through road trips to clean the
bugs off the windshield. Has anything changed with the insect population? Many scientists say, “Yes,”
and research data is startling.
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