[clpete]

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We had a strange encounter last week as were taking the long way around to avoid I-15 through Salt Lake City during rush hour. We ended up on the west side of Utah Lake on a pretty nice 50 mph road, between the lake and hill side, with lots of curves. We were hoping that we would be able to cut east once we past the lake, but much to my wife’s dismay the road kept going south. (We were schedule to be a cookout and were going to be way late.) My short cut added about 2 hours to our journey.

Finally we started getting close to a small town and figured that the east bound road was near. About that time I started to feel something tapping the toe of shoe. I looked down a couple times put there didn’t seem to be anything down there, but it kept happening. All and of a sudden my wife started to screaming about something hitting here legs. Then and only then I noticed that the road had something on it. Grasshoppers! Thousand and thousands of grasshoppers. I would guess that there were any were from 5 to 20 per sq ft. Disgusting! This went on for about 5 miles and they disappeared just about the time we pulled up to the east/west crossroad we were looking for.

We had grasshopper guts everywhere. You would not believe all the pretty colors on the lower cowling behind the front tire. Before leaving town we found a car wash and got most the guts off. I was still finding large pieces of the critters on my bike yesterday when I was checking the tires.

Any other bug or small critter stories?

 

[hoverkat]

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The only one that comes to mind was once I drove through a swarm of june bugs. splatting against the fairing, all was cool until I looked down and on my shirt pocket there was one crawling UP. scared the beejees out of me. Seemed a lot bigger that close up!

 

[UbarW]

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The usual june bug in the forehead story...

Had a bee get inside the helmet and crawl around once, didnt sting though. whew...

 

[FenderHead]

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Oh yeah, much like yours, we went thru aswarm of locusts on US 2 somewhere in North Dakota, back in the late '70s. Fork seals were shot, air horns were packed full of...stuff, clothes were a mess...you know...the stuff memories are made of...:action:

Oh yeah...around here we get something called "Lake Flies", usually 2x/year...they resemble really, reallylarge mosquitoes, but they don't bite. They tend to swarm so thick that you cannot see thru them (the swarms). Unlike locusts, they have but one colour when shmooshed...GREEN. Nasty green. Permanent marker green. Grass-stain-on-the-knees green. :shock: DO NOT get into them if you can help it. I've been thru one memorable swarm on a bike, that must have been hanging there for some time, as the road was so greasy from their carcasses that I almost went down...more memories...:gunhead:

 

[nobbie]

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Fortunately I was in the cage but it was frog migration season one night and the tires kept making squish noises.

 

[knute]

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just southwest of Detroit Lakes, MN, got into a low spot with a tad of fog and a ton of dragonflies, no shield, and I could see em' coming at me, I was head-jivin' big time.

 

[JBz]

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I ran away from home when I was about 14 and hitchiked across the western USA for a few months. Somewhere at night in Utah a couple picked me up. They were drinking and smoking pot and she was driving with him next to her. They were doing about 85 and ran iinto a swarm of them and the whole windshield turned green. She turned on the wipers and I almost puked in the back seat. JB

 

[JamesGang]

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Many years ago, on a cross Canada trip, we passed through southern Sask. during a grasshopper infestation. We were traveling in a camperised 1973 VW bus with permanently raised fibre glass top. It looked like a double decker! Anyway, the hoppers were so thick on the road that it was as slippery as seal sh*t on an ice flow. The crunching sound and smell from all those crushed bodies was sickening. I thought the wrath of God had descended on the world, just unbelievable!

As a side note, that raised roof on the bus gave me more then one scare when we were hit by cross winds. At one point, I swear we were riding on two tires and I had to counter steer in the corners!

 

[RB]

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Yellow butterflies millions of them..just outside Yuma, AZ..ever year in the Spring along the main highway..

 

[k1w1t1m]

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It was a swarm of bees for me. At 70 mph it only lasted a micro second but it was long enough for one to sneak over the windscreen and above my glasses to hit me just obove the eye on my eyelid. Unfortunately it hit sharp end first so I had a swollen eye for a while.

 

[VA.GENT]

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Last fall I ran into a swarm of nat's.I mean my windshield and my shield turned black. Was hard to get off to.I was afraid I would scratch the shields had to really soak them with pledge.

 

[fenry]

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In 1971 my wife proudly delivered our first child at the local hospital in Hamilton, Bermuda. We wereassigned tothe newly commissioned naval air station at what had been Kindley AFB, and I was happily motoring back to the base on my 125 Yamaha when I rounded a curve on South Shore Road and T-boned a local toad. Might not sound like much, but the local toads weighed in at between 3 and 5lb. It was like hitting a possum dressed in leather jungle camo...:XFortunately there was no damage to me or the bike as I was able to keep from going into the cut coral solid walls that border much of Bermuda's roads...:shockotherwise the bike might have had to be toad home...:cheeky1

 

[FenderHead]

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fenry wrote:

Might not sound like much, but the local toads weighed in at between 3 and 5lb.It was like hitting a possum dressed in leather jungle camo...

:cheeky1::cheeky1: That's a good 'un...may I use it from time-to-time?? :cheeky1::cheeky1:

 

[Ruaidh]

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Riding through Willard, just north of Ogden, in the evening hours will do it. Mosquitoes and gnats and all else. Legacy Parkway is a great road to ride but the bugs in the evening are bad too, and then you have the record number of skunks and raccoons that get hit on there. If you don't hit one yourself, you can hit one someone else has pegged.

Drove through a butterfly migration once in a cage. Yellow guts that took three washes to get off. Had a co-worker have a robin fly under the bubble face shield of his helmet once. He wasn't riding fast or far, but shut his eyes against the claws of the bird and got the bike shut down and threw his helmet off. The bird fell out of the helmet and squawked a couple of times, then flew off. Other than some minor scratches, no injuries.

 

[Roach]

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Mayflies, on the shores of Lake Superior or along the Mississippi. Looks like smoke or gray fog until you get into them. They occasionally have to get the snow plow out.

 

[Biker John]

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Roach wrote:

Mayflies, on the shores of Lake Superior or along the Mississippi. Looks like smoke or gray fog until you get into them. They occasionally have to get the snow plow out.

Also on US-2 from Lake Michigan.

 

[fenry]

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FenderHead wrote:

fenry wrote:

Might not sound like much, but the local toads weighed in at between 3 and 5lb.It was like hitting a possum dressed in leather jungle camo...

:cheeky1::cheeky1: That's a good 'un...may I use it from time-to-time?? :cheeky1::cheeky1:

Be my guest....

 

[exavid]

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Gnats. I ran into fog once only to discover to my dismay it wasn't fog. Yuk! I hate any bug with lots of yellow guts too. Got my bike covered with a bunch of bee poop once after parking by a behive. Looks like small bits of yellow bug guts but it wasn't.

 

[lostinflorida]

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Twice a year here in Florida we have a terrible infestation of lovebugs. Sometimes they are wide spread, other times they are spotty.
When they are bad, you will have to pull over in a car just to clean the windshield.
If you leave them on for any length of time, they will eat the paint off your car.

 

[ding dong]

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Salt Lake City? Grasshoppers? Where were the all seagulls this time? Referring to the seagull monument. Anyone know their history?