From God Save Texas (Lawrence Wright, 2018) pp311
It feels ominous to drive through West Texas with a clean windshield. Road trips always used to be accompanied by the incessant splatter of death. We’d pass through clouds of lovebugs, those perpetually copulating critters, which coated the windshield in a greenish sheen; and then the grasshoppers would hit, in blobs of orange-yellow goo. Painted ladies and miller moths and June bugs contributed their own colorful innards. Wipers only made things worse. The whole front of the car would be peppered with insect carcasses, and the Texas sun baked them into a buggy frittata. They were hell to wash off; I remember scrubbing the grille and never getting it clean enough. Truckers, especially, would protect their radiators with mesh shields. Bugs were simply part of the Texas air.
Now, when I collide with a bug, I’m surprised. I can only speak for Texas, but the absence of insects seems to be a part of a general diminution of life. The fence lines along our roadsides used to be ornamented with scissor-tailed flycatchers, those elegant acrobats, so rare now that the insects have disappeared. Steve remembers the sound of turtles being scrunched as tires rolled over them; this was at a time when so many were crossing the road it was hard to thread a route through them. The inventory of life forms is being funneled down to a roster of hardy pests. We’re living in a world of mosquitos, roaches, fire ants, starlings, rattlesnakes, and feral hogs. In fairness to the animals, I suppose I should add humans to the top of the list.
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