Defending Town and Wildlife

I saw the image of a fishfly on the front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning. The story is headlined “Something Smells Fishy In These Tony Michigan Towns.” Then I see that the story is from Grosse Pointe, MI. So we are “tony,” are we? The author got that wrong. Next I encounter this little snippet: “The worst part: The flies have little to do with fish. The name refers to the smell all those rotting bugs give off.” Wrong again. Finally our author found a policeman in my part of the Pointes, Grosse Pointe Farms. According to that official, this year’s is supposed to be the worst “invasion” in more than 30 years. Not in our opinion here.

“Tony” is supposed to be “high-toned,” thus “uppity.” In the 1920s, I am told it was the name of a reddish-brown fashion color. Yes. The Grosse Pointes are well off to wealthy. And the color is right because most of the homes are brick. But if you live here and know the population—from its highest to its modest levels—it would occur to no one to describe this place as “tony.” Want to be negative? Call the Grosse Pointes bourgeois—with the kind of intonation a French person would use. Want to be neutral? Upscale, staid will do. Want to be positive: Reserved, traditional describes us. We also have lots and lots and lots of trees. They cover us. Green, green. Major budget battles here turn on how many and which kinds of trees to plant. Tony? Baloney.

The fishfly is an aquatic insect meaning that it spends one year out of each year under water living in submerged mud burrows. Had to add that word, submerged, just to emphasize the point. Through most of its life this creature is a nymph. It turns into a winged insect just before its time has come to reproduce—and die. Sex is enjoyed high in the air. Then the fertilized females deposit their eggs on the water. Finally, male and female, they fly inland to die. The fishy smell? Well, hadn’t noticed it. Indeed, just to see, I collected some and held them to my nose. No sign of it. They are called fishfly because they live under water.

Now for that “worst invasion” in 30 years. The policeman may have been referring to the WSJ’s invasion of the Pointes, not to the fishflies. 2010 was much worse; last year the fishflies were both late and rather thin in population. This year was just about right. The Journal’s writer did get one thing right. Elsewhere these creatures are called mayflies. Around here they tend to peak around about June 16.

Fishfly Days and Fishfly Nights

This is the season when fishflies swarm up and out of Lake St. Claire in Michigan and fly west by in their millions with no other aim than to die in peace clinging to innumerable screens and window panes. By night they darken the streetlights in vast clouds of frantic, joyous dance.

The fishfly is actually the mayfly, an aquatic insect in the tantalizingly named Order of Ephemeroptera. The Michigan variety is the Hexagenia limbata, a somewhat obscure name put together from a word meaning “six generations” and another meaning “margined,” the last because the edges of the mayfly nymph’s body are brightly colored.

The fishfly spends most of its life as a wingless nymph living under water in mud burrows; after about a year’s life feeding unseen in water and in mud, the nymph (sometimes dubbed the dun, based on its color) undergoes two moultings, one to a teenaged winged insect still sexually inactive, next to a winged adult in the mood for love up in the air. Fertilized females descend to deposit their eggs on the waters of St. Claire (and many other places in this Great Lakes Region). After the orgy is over, it is time to say goodbye—forever. Within a day the fishflies are dead but still clinging to surfaces where they have settled to dream of recent love in their last brief stage of life. In their two last stages these creatures have mouths that do not feed and stomachs destined to hold nothing but air—which reminds me of the “many difficulties inherent in a teleological view of creation,” as Dorothy Sayers has Inspector Parker remark in her novel Clouds of Witness. (Now that’s the kind of detective I want investigating my demise if it should happen violently.)

In this view the short-timers have found solace on the stone of our study’s window sill where, in nice contrast to the stone’s light surface, the camera can capture them more easily.